Sensorimotor interaction for stability: influence of sensory information on cortical control of balance

这项研究的目的是全面评估人类如何使用感官来帮助控制平衡。平衡控制是对突然失去稳定性（如滑倒或绊倒）的准备和反应能力。准备允许早期的肌肉活动，以减少平衡损失的大小，当它发生。平衡反应确保肌肉活动与发生平衡损失时所需的大小相匹配。有效地为失去平衡做准备和做出反应对于完成简单的任务（如步行）或更复杂的活动（如工作或娱乐）非常重要，但平衡的基本感觉运动控制仍然没有完全理解。我们的感官使我们能够从环境中获取有助于保持平衡的信息。根据以往的经验，我们可以利用这些信息来预测如何最好地激活我们的肌肉，以防止失去平衡。由于这些信息，我们可以在正确的时间打开我们的肌肉，并产生足够的力量，以减少我们失去平衡时的不稳定性。来自我们感官的信息也可以告诉我们失去平衡的程度有多大，这样我们就可以迅速产生肌肉力量来阻止摔倒。有趣的是，我们的肌肉反应在不同的情况下会有所不同，比如坐着和站着。这意味着我们可以根据我们对环境的感知和我们失去平衡时正在执行的任务来改变我们的平衡能力，以及来自我们感官的信息。我们可以假设，人类的大脑正在以某种方式利用有关环境、任务和我们的感官的信息来改善平衡。事实上，在平衡任务期间进行的大脑记录显示了大脑在失去平衡之前，期间和之后的活跃程度。然而，我们还不知道来自我们感官的信息变化如何改变这种大脑活动。目前的建议包括四个目标来解决这一知识差距：目标1：确定来自我们感官的信息如何在与平衡相关的大脑活动中表现出来。目标2：确定感觉信息和平衡相关大脑活动之间关系的变化如何影响肌肉平衡功能。目标3：描述感觉信息在我们如何协调身体左右两侧的平衡活动中的作用。目标4：了解当我们的注意力集中在其他事情上时，我们如何使用感官信息来平衡。平衡控制被认为是人类的基本能力。良好的平衡控制使我们能够处理最简单的日常任务的挑战，并使我们能够更好地在我们的环境中移动。这项研究将帮助我们了解我们如何使用来自感官，环境和任务的信息来帮助控制平衡，这对日常功能至关重要。

The goal of this research is to comprehensively evaluate how humans use their senses to help control their balance. Balance control is the ability to prepare for and react to a sudden loss of stability like a slip or a trip. Preparation allows early muscle activity to reduce the size of balance loss when it happens. Balance reactions ensure that muscle activity is as large as needed to match the size of balance loss when it happens. Effectively preparing for and reacting to a loss of balance is important for doing simple tasks like walking or more complex activities like work or play, yet the fundamental sensorimotor control of balance is still not fully understood. Our senses allow us to retrieve information from the environment that helps to maintain balance. Based on previous experience, we can use this information to make predictions about how to best activate our muscles to stop from losing balance. Because of this information, we can turn on our muscles at the right time and generate enough force to reduce how unstable we are if we lose our balance. The information from our senses can also tell us about how large our loss of balance is so we can quickly generate muscle force to stop from falling. Interestingly, our muscle responses will be different in different situations like sitting versus standing. This means we can change our balance abilities based on our perception of the environment and the task we are performing when we lose balance, in addition to the information from our senses. We can assume that the human brain is somehow using information about the environment, the task, and our senses to improve balance. In fact, brain recordings conducted during balance tasks show just how active the brain is before, during, and after a loss of balance. We don't yet know, however, how the changes in the information from our senses alter this brain activity. The current proposal includes four aims to address this knowledge gap: Aim 1: identify how information from our senses is represented in balance-related brain activity. Aim 2: determine how changes in the relationship between sensory information and balance-related brain activity impacts muscle function for balance. Aim 3: characterize the role of sensory information in how we coordinate balance activity between the left and right sides of our body. Aim 4: understand how we use information from our senses for balance if our attention is focused on something else. Balance control is viewed as a basic human ability. Good balance control allows us to handle the challenges of the simplest of daily tasks and makes us better able to move in our environment. This research will help us understand how we use information from our senses, the environment, and the task to help control balance, something crucial for everyday function.