Abstract
Performance and control of upright bipedal posture requires a constant and dynamic integration of relative contributions of different sensory inputs (i. e., sensory reweighting) to enable effective adaptations as individuals face environmental changes and perturbations. Children with gymnastic experience showed balance performance closer to that of adults during and after proprioceptive alteration than children without gymnastic experience when their center of pressure (COP) was analyzed. However, a particular COP sway can be achieved through performing and coordinating different postural movements. The aim of this study was to assess how children and adults of different gymnastic experience perform and control postural movements while they have to adjust balance during and after bilateral tendon vibration. All participants were equipped with spherical markers attached to their skin and two vibrators strapped over the Achilles tendons. Bipedal stance was performed in three 45-s trials in two visual conditions (eyes open, EO, and eyes closed, EC) ordered randomly in which vibration lasted 10 s. Posture movements were analyzed by a principal component analysis (PCA) calculated on normalized and weighted markers coordinates. The relative standard deviation of each principal movement component (principal position, PP-rSTD) quantified its contribution to the whole postural movements, i.e., quantified the coordinative structure. The first (principal velocities, PV-rSTD) and second (principal accelerations, PA-rSTD) time-derivatives characterized the rate-dependent sensory information associated with and the neuromuscular control of the postural movements, respectively. Children without gymnastic experience showed a different postural coordinative structure and different sensory-motor control characteristics. They used less ankle movements in the anterior-posterior direction but increased ankle movements in medio-lateral direction, presented larger hip and trunk velocities, and exhibited more hip actions. Gymnastic experience during childhood seemed to benefit the development of proprioceptive reweighting processes in children, leading to a more mature form of coordinating and controlling posture similarly to adults.
Highlights
Upright bipedal stance is one of the most common postures used in daily life activities and in recreational and sports skills
In general and in contrast to before vibration phase (BV), principal components related to movements in the anterior-posterior direction (AP) direction for the ankle and knee (PP-rSTD1 and PP-rSTD6) presented a significant increase of the PP-rSTD values in during vibration phase (DV) and AV1 (Table 2, Figure 2), while movements in medio-lateral direction (ML) direction (PPrSTD2) or rotations (PP-rSTD4 and PP-rSTD5) decreased their values during the DV and AV1
PP-rSTD3 showed a decrease in values for AV1 and AV2 compared to BV and DV
Summary
Upright bipedal stance is one of the most common postures used in daily life activities and in recreational and sports skills. Far from its simple appearance, performance, and control of a vertical posture on both feet requires constant adjustments to environmental changes and organism perturbations (Walter, 1998; Hatzitaki et al, 2002). These adjustments involve dynamic processes that require the integration of sensory information from multiple sources (e.g., visual, proprioceptive, and vestibular systems) and the use of coordinated muscular actions to control the body movements that preserve the desired posture (i.e., postural movements) (Forssberg and Nashner, 1982; Jeka et al, 2000; Peterka and Loughlin, 2004; Hsu et al, 2007; Peterka, 2018). Previous studies analyzing COP during bipedal stance were able to show the impact of the availability of different sensory sources and confirmed that stabilization after proprioceptive manipulation (i.e., vibration) occurs not immediately, but gradually (Vuillerme et al, 2001b; McKay et al, 2014; Busquets et al, 2018)
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