Effect of Cervical Kinesthetic Motor Imagery on Postural Control of Healthy Young Adults with Fear of Falling

Abstract

Motor imagery (MI) is the act of coding the mental aspect of an intended task without executing it. Fear consists of an anxiogenic response to a previous event, which provides a state of alertness to the individual in the face of a threat. These two conditions (imagery and fear) may modulate orthostatic postural control, but their combined effect is still unknown. To investigate whether cervical kinesthetic motor imagery induces modulations in postural control and in the fear of falling (FoF) sensation in healthy young adults. Participants (n = 20) were placed on the Wii Balance Board ® and oriented to perform and imagine three tasks for 60 s: (1) closed eyes; (2) cervical flexion; and (3) cervical inclination. The number of performed and imagined repetitions were recorded, and participants responded to a question at the end of each task regarding the FoF. There were four relevant effects: (1) there was no difference between the number of performed and imagined repetitions (p > 0.05) indicating similarities; (2) there was a greater sensation of FoF induced by kinesthetic MI tasks (p < 0.001); (3) there was a greater modulation of the center of pressure (mean velocity and amplitude) in the anteroposterior direction in phobic subjects (p < 0.05); and (4) there was no modulation between the non-phobic subjects in the anteroposterior direction (p > 0.05). The FoF during kinesthetic MI tasks may influence the orthostatic postural control, favoring the reduction in postural stability.

Postural Strategy in Elderly, Middle-Aged, and Young People during Local Vibratory Stimulation for Proprioceptive Inputs

“…Postural stability characteristics were measured using a balance board (Wii, Nintendo Co., Ltd., Kyoto, Japan) [8,10,11,12]. Balance board data were acquired using a sampling frequency of 100 Hz and calculated using Matlab (MathWorks, Inc., Natick, MA, USA) with a low-pass filter and a cutoff frequency of 20 Hz.…”