Abstract
Dynamic balance conditions were realized by asking eight volunteers to stand on uniaxial balance board with adjustable geometry and to carry out 60 s long balancing trials. Four different balance board geometry were used, each associated with different difficulty level. Balancing trials were repeated five times weekly (learning period) in order to test improvement of balancing skill. The measurement was repeated eight weeks after the learning period in order to check the persistence of the balancing skill (confirmation session). Oscillations of ankle angle and hip angle were monitored by OptiTrack motion capture system and four stabilometry parameters were used to characterize improvement in balancing performance, namely, Standard Deviation (STD), Largest Amplitude (LA), Normalized Path Length (NPL) and Mean Power Frequency (MPF). STD and NPL show similar tendency to the preliminary expectations, therefore they can be considered as good measures to describe balancing performance. Results show that subjects used ankle strategy for the less difficult balance board configurations, while for the more difficult tasks, hip strategy was also involved. Changes in STD and NPL during the learning period showed that the improvement and the persistence in balancing skill is more significant for more difficult balancing tasks.
Highlights
Number of falls caused by loss of balance is increasing worldwide and poses a serious challenge in the aging societies [1, 2], more and more research effort is devoted to the investigation of human balancing
Oscillations of ankle angle and hip angle were monitored by OptiTrack motion capture system and four stabilometry parameters were used to characterize improvement in balancing performance, namely, Standard Deviation (STD), Largest Amplitude (LA), Normalized Path Length (NPL) and Mean Power Frequency (MPF)
The balance board angle φb was found to be correlated to the ankle angle φa it is not presented in separate figure
Summary
Number of falls caused by loss of balance is increasing worldwide and poses a serious challenge in the aging societies [1, 2], more and more research effort is devoted to the investigation of human balancing. The main risks of falls are nonactive lifestyle, decreased medical conditions, impaired mobility, cognitive disorders, foot problems, attenuated vision and increased reaction time [3,4,5]. A significant part of the ongoing research focuses on the mathematical modeling of the operation of the Central Nervous System (CNS) during balancing tasks. The behavior of the CNS can be analyzed by performing simple balancing tasks that can be described by lowdegree-of-freedom mechanical models. Stick balancing [9,10,11], ankle strategy during quiet standing [12,13,14,15] and ball and beam [16] balancing are often modelled as a single-segment single-joint inverted pendulum, while hip strategy during quiet standing [17,18,19] and standing on a balance board [20,21,22] are modelled as a system of double inverted pendulum
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