Falls continue to be a serious public health concern in the United States, accounting for over 85% of the fractures in older adults, often leading to disability and even death. The objective of this research is to increase our understanding of the influence of aging upon balance by continuing our studies on the role of attention in postural control in older adults. Recent studies have shown that postural control requires increasing attentional effort, particularly in older adults. Our recent research also has shown that balance recovery engages attention rapidly in young and older adults. In this proposal we will focus on understanding how attention is engaged in balance in older adults. We hypothesize that balance engages attention through perceptual channel facilitation/inhibition, central selection/decision mechanisms, and in motor response selection. Further, we hypothesize that aging influences each of these mechanisms. We propose to use dual-task paradigms that vary information processing tasks and balance tasks such that the characteristics of attentional selectivity involved in postural control can be uncovered. This proposed study has four specific aims.
The first aim i s to determine the attentional selectivity in standing postural control in young and older adults; more specifically, to investigate sensory integration, perceptual channel selectivity and the relative roles of facilitation and inhibition.
The second aim i s to investigate the temporal dynamics of attention during balance recovery from rapid perturbations in older adults.
The third aim i s to investigate the influence of attention on motor response selection during balance recovery following postural perturbations.
The fourth aim i s to determine the role of attention in postural responses to moving visual environments. Four experiments are proposed. Each experiment will incorporate different postural tasks and information processing tasks to address the associated hypotheses. This research will lead to a greater understanding of how attention and balance interact and how aging influences that interaction.
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