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Ontogenetic development of postural control in man: adaptation to altered support and visual conditions during stance
Insights
Young children
Area of Science:
- Developmental neuroscience
- Motor control research
- Human sensorimotor adaptation
Background:
- Postural control is essential for maintaining balance.
- Children's ability to adapt balance strategies develops over time.
- Understanding sensorimotor integration in development is crucial.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the development of automatic postural adjustments in children.
- To examine how children adapt to altered sensory information for balance.
- To differentiate maturation of automatic vs. adaptive postural control.
Main Methods:
- Assessed children aged 1.5-10 years using experimental paradigms.
- Utilized a movable platform and visual surround for altered conditions.
- Analyzed data using electromyography (EMG), reaction forces, and body motion.
Main Results:
- Children's automatic postural adjustments showed similar structure to adults, but with more variability.
- Younger children (under 7.5 years) struggled to ignore incorrect sensory input.
- Automatic postural adjustments matured earlier than adaptive sensory reweighting.
Conclusions:
- Automatic postural control matures before the ability to adapt sensory input weighting.
- Developmental changes in balance involve separate maturation of automatic and adaptive processes.
- Hierarchical maturation of sensorimotor systems underlies developing postural control.
Abstract:
Normal young children ranging in age from 1 1/2 to 10 years were assessed in a number of experimental paradigms testing the ability to adapt quickly their strategy of control to altered support surface and visual conditions. The experimental protocols, using a movable platform and visual surround, and the analytic techniques, using EMGs and measures of reaction forces and body motions, were identical to those employed in a complementary study in this issue (Nashner, L. M., F. O. Black, and C. Wall, III (1982) J. Neurosci. 2: 536-544). The structure of automatic postural adjustments in young children was, with the exception of greater variability, similar to that of adult subjects studied previously. However, young children below the age of 7 1/2 years were unable to suppress systematically the influence of inputs derived from the support surface or from vision when these provided inappropriate orientation information due to the motion of these surfaces. The discussion emphasizes that the automatic postural adjustments and the context-dependent reweighting of support surface, vestibular, and visual inputs are organizationally separate processes and that the hierarchically lower level automatic process matures before the higher level adaptive processes.