Visual input is critical for postural control in patients with chronic right hemisphere infarcts

Abstract

Stroke remains a leading cause of long-term disability and is the second most common cause of death worldwide.1 Many persons face restrictions in the performance of day to day tasks after stroke. The return of postural control is an early and central element for both motor and functional recovery and is a prerequisite for recovery of sitting, standing, transferring, turning, and reaching. Poor postural control predicts higher levels of dependence, handicap, and falls.2 A high quality of life is thus strongly dependent on improvement of postural control. Patients with stroke, as compared to healthy age-matched individuals, compensate for motor and sensory impairments with greater dependence on visual information for postural control in both planes, the medial-lateral (ML) and anterior-posterior (AP).3 This increased visual dependence may be a nonspecific strategy to compensate for the loss or distortion of other sensory inputs. Subjects shift their spatial reference frame …