Abstract
Light Touch (LT) has been shown to reduce postural sway in a wide range of populations. While LT is believed to provide additional sensory information for balance modulation, the nature of this information and its specific effect on balance are yet unclear. In order to better understand LT and to potentially harness its advantages for a practical balance aid, we investigated the effect of LT as provided by a haptic robot. Postural sway during standing balance was reduced when the LT force (~ 1 N) applied to the high back area was dependent on the trunk velocity. Additional information on trunk position, provided through orthogonal vibrations, further reduced the sway position-metric of balance but did not further improve the velocity-metric of balance. Our results suggest that limited and noisy information on trunk velocity encoded in LT is sufficient to influence standing balance.
Highlights
In Light Touch (LT), small interaction forces on a fingertip have been shown to improve human postural stability during standing [1,2,3]
It is speculated that the interaction force during interpersonal touch (IPT) in Johannsen et al [3] varies with the sway direction, with the applied force decreasing as the patient sways away from the therapist and vice-versa
The average light interaction force applied by the haptic robot varied slightly by each trial due to individual differences but remained approximately 1 N±0.4 N, where the variation was due to friction and damping
Summary
In Light Touch (LT), small interaction forces on a fingertip have been shown to improve human postural stability during standing [1,2,3]. LT may compensate for the loss of sensory inputs related to balance originating from the ACL [10], bottom of the foot [8], or vestibular system [12]. It is still unclear what relevant balance information is encoded in the small interaction forces from LT [13,14,15,16].
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