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

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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.