Abstract
Instrumented assessments of quiet-stance postural control typically involve recording and analyzing of body sway signal, most often the center of pressure (CoP) movement. It has been recently suggested that transient characteristics of body sway may offer additional information regarding postural control. In this study, we explored the relationship between whole-trial estimates of body sway (CoP velocity, amplitude, and frequency) and corresponding transient behavior indexes, as well as the effects of leg preference. A total of 705 healthy young athletes performed 30 s single-leg body sway trials for both legs. It was found that the transient characteristics of the body sway (expressed as relative differences between individual time intervals within the trial) are in negligible or weak correlation (r ≤ 0.26) with the corresponding variables, averaged across the whole trial. All CoP variables showed transient characteristics, reflected in statistically significant decrease (CoP velocity and amplitude) or increase (CoP frequency) throughout the trial. The preferred leg showed smaller body sway; however, the effect sizes were very small. Moreover, differences between the legs were also noted in terms of transient characteristics of body sway. In particular, the preferred leg showed earlier reduction in anterior–posterior body sway and larger reduction in medial–lateral body sway. Further studies should focus on examining the clinical utility of indexes of transient behavior of body sway, for instance, their sensitivity to aging-related changes and risk of falling.
Highlights
The examination of quiet-stance postural control by assessing body sway characteristics during quiet standing is routinely used in research and practice in several fields related to human health and human movement (Piirtola and Era, 2006; Ku et al, 2014; Yen et al, 2016; Roman-Liu, 2018; Kozinc et al, 2020)
For DIF_21 and DIF_21, the coefficient of variance (CV) were below 10% for most variables (CV = 7.5–9.5), except for all center of pressure (CoP) amplitude variables (CV = 12.5–19.9%)
On the other hand, when the preferred leg was based on the handedness, leg × time interval interactions were observed for all CoP velocity variables and CoP AP amplitude, and statistically significant differences were noted between the legs in transient characteristics
Summary
The examination of quiet-stance postural control by assessing body sway characteristics during quiet standing is routinely used in research and practice in several fields related to human health and human movement (Piirtola and Era, 2006; Ku et al, 2014; Yen et al, 2016; Roman-Liu, 2018; Kozinc et al, 2020). Several studies have explored the effects of elimination (e.g., closing the eyes to eliminate the visual system) or manipulation (e.g., using compliant base of support to manipulate somatosensory information) of one or more of the systems (Assländer and Peterka, 2016; Gera et al, 2016; Peterka, 2018; Appiah-Kubi and Wright, 2019; Feller et al, 2019) Such investigations contribute to the understating of the underlying mechanisms of postural control (Peterka, 2002, 2018; Assländer and Peterka, 2016) and may provide additional clinical utility for recognition of postural balance deficits (Gera et al, 2016; Appiah-Kubi and Wright, 2019; Feller et al, 2019). The ballet dancers required more time to reweigh sensory information, which was believed to be a sport-specific adaptation characterized by heavier reliance on somatosensory information (Thalassinos et al, 2018)
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