Constraints specific influences of vision, touch and surface compliance in postural dynamics

Abstract

Studies that have manipulated vision and touch in posture usually emphasize the prescriptive closed-loop function of the information to reduce the amount of postural motion. In contrast, we examine here the hypothesis that the standard sensory manipulations to maintain quiet stance also change in specific ways the constraints on the task goal and the emergent movement organization. Twelve participants were instructed to maintain quiet postural stance under three sensory factors: surface compliance (foam/no foam), visual information (open/closed eyes) and tactile information (finger touch/no finger touch). The standard deviation of center of pressure (COP) motion decreased with the presence of vision, touch and rigid surface. The correlation dimension showed that the manipulation of touch and vision produced different attractor dynamics that also interacted with surface compliance. Vision decreased the correlation dimension in the foam surface while the touch manipulation increased dimension in the rigid surface. The sensory information manipulations changed the qualitative properties of the attractor dynamics as well as the quantitative properties of the amount of postural motion providing evidence for the specific nature of the postural organization across information conditions.