Higher visual dependency increases balance control perturbation during cognitive task fulfilment in elderly people

Jamet, Mallaury; Deviterne, Dominique; Gauchard, Gérome C.; Vançon, Guy; Perrin, Philippe

doi:10.1016/j.neulet.2004.02.010

Cited by 57 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…However, our results demonstrate that the performance in the backward counting task also improves after adolescence. The present results could be linked to the difference in attentional resources and working memory mobilized according to the nature of the cognitive task (Jamet et al, 2004). During a Stroop task, an interference phenomenon induced disturbance but not saturation in working memory implementation, whereas in a counting task, working memory rapidly reached the overload point (Lemaire et al, 1996).…”

Section: Age-related Differences In Cognitive Performancesmentioning

confidence: 59%

Postural control and attentional demand during adolescence

2010

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In the present study we aimed to determine the attentional cost of postural control during adolescence by studying the influence of a cognitive task on concurrent postural control. 38 teenagers aged 12 to 17 years and 13 young adults (mean age = 26.1) stood barefoot on a force platform in a semi-tandem position. A dual-task paradigm consisted of performing a Stroop or a COUNTING BACKWARD task while simultaneously standing quietly on a firm or foam support surface. Different centre of pressure (CoP) measures were calculated (90% confidence ellipse area, mean velocity, root mean square on the antero-posterior (AP) and medio-lateral (ML) axes). The number and percentage of correct responses in the cognitive tasks were also recorded. Our results indicate (1) higher values of surface, ML mean velocity and ML RMS in the COUNTING BACKWARD task in adolescents aged 12 to 15 than in teenagers aged 16 to 17 and in adults, regardless of the complexity of the postural task and, (2) better cognitive performances in the Stroop than in the COUNTING BACKWARD task. The difference in the dual-task performance between the different age groups and particularly the existence of a turning point around 14-15 years of age might be due to 1) difficulties in properly allocating attentional resources to two simultaneous tasks and/or, 2) the inability to manage increased cognitive requests because of a limited information processing capacity in adolescents aged 14-15 years. IntroductionAlthough it has often been argued that undisturbed quiet standing is automatically regulated, several studies using dual-task paradigms demonstrated a clear link between the regulation of sway and higher-order processes (Lajoie et al., 1993). Even in young adults, a minimum amount of attention is required to stand upright. The more challenging the postural task (e.g., feet-together or unipedal stance), the greater the required attentional resources (Dault et al., 2001). Cognitive (e.g., reading, counting backward, and spelling words) and postural tasks (e.g., upright stance and one-leg balance) require common cognitive mechanisms that involve a conflicting relationship when both tasks are performed simultaneously (Kerr et al., 1985). Increasing the level of difficulty of the cognitive task involves either increased (Blanchard et al., 2005), decreased (Andersson et al., 2002) or unchanged (Kerr et al., 1985) centre of foot pressure (CoP) excursions. Conversely, the performance of the cognitive task (e.g., backward counting and reaction-time task) can be compromised by a simultaneous control of quiet stance in adults with calf vibration (Andersson et al., 2002), on a beam (Barra et al., 2006) or with suppression or perturbation of sensory information in the elderly . The

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Section: Age-related Differences In Cognitive Performancesmentioning

confidence: 59%

Postural control and attentional demand during adolescence

2010

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“…For instance, there is evidence for higher COP displacements under the condition of processing a concurrent spatial task than in the condition of processing a verbal task [17,32]. Other studies have found, however, no differences between verbal and spatial dual-task conditions [8,12,79] or less COP displacements in spatial than in verbal processing conditions [14,60]. Again, it is of particular importance to equate the general cognitive demands, or difficulty, of verbal and spatial tasks used in dual-task studies in order to compare the "pure" difference in the effects of concurrent verbal and spatial processing.…”

Section: Cognitive Demands Of the Secondary Taskmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…For instance, in support of the attention resource competition view, Andersson et al [2] found that performing a concurrent visuospatial search task decreased balance performance in middle-aged adults (M age = 40.4 years) under a challenging condition with attenuated proprioceptive sensory inputs (i.e., standing on a sway-referenced platforms). However, other studies found that performing a concurrent cognitive task while standing actually enhanced postural control [1,4,[8][9][10][11]14,51,52,63,70,76]. For example, examining the effects of a variety of working memory tasks including a visuospatial task, Dault et al [8] found reduced center of body pressure (COP) displacements in young adults (M age = 23.0) under dual-task situations compared to the single-task condition regardless of the difficulty of the postural control task.…”

Section: Dual-task Attentional Sharing Between Postural Control and Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A review of the literature suggests that the interactions between mental processes and postural control can be modulated by factors such as stimulus and response modalities (e.g., [10,61,62,80]), difficulty of the concurrent secondary task (see [72], for review), postural constraints affecting the difficulty of the postural task (e.g., [9,19,50,68,79], individual differences in sensorimotor expertise (e.g., [68]), and aging (e.g., [11,14,22,25,28,32,36,63]). A number of studies considered the influence of experimental procedural factors of the concurrent task (e.g., stimulus presentation and response modes) on posture control.…”

Section: Potential Factors Affecting Resource Sharing Between Posturamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Dual-tasking postural control: Aging and the effects of cognitive demand in conjunction with focus of attention

Huxhold

Schmiedek

et al. 2006

Brain Research Bulletin

514

379

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Postural control in everyday life is generally accompanied by posture-unrelated cognitive activity. Thus, mild forms of dual-tasking postural control are the norm rather than the exception. Based on this consideration and available evidence, we propose and empirically examined, in young and old adults, a non-monotonic, U-shaped relation between the efficacy of postural control and concurrent cognitive demands that reflect opposing trends of the effects of attention focus and attentional resource competition. When instructed to perform an easy cognitive task that presumably shifted the focus of attention away from posture control, the center of body pressure (COP) excursions decreased both in young and older adults relative to a single-task baseline where the focus of attention was explicitly directed towards the postural control task itself. However, when performing more demanding cognitive tasks, older adults showed increased COP displacements, in line with the predicted Ushape function, whereas young adults did not. We outline mechanisms linking postural control to cognitive demand and suggest routes for future investigation.

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“…This suggests a greater reliance on external and contextual visual cues for controlling posture and subsequently a greater impact of the visual surround manipulations on their sway. This is not uncommon when considering the faster age-induced degeneration of the proprioceptive and vestibular systems, over the years, which inevitably increase the weights assigned to vision for controlling posture (Jamet et al 2004;Lord et al 1991).…”

Section: Sensory Reweighting In Quiet Stancementioning

confidence: 99%

Age-dependent modulation of sensory reweighting for controlling posture in a dynamic virtual environment

Eikema

Hatzitaki

Tzovaras

et al. 2011

AGE

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Older adults require more time to reweight sensory information for maintaining balance that could potentially lead to increased incidence of falling in rapidly changing or cognitively demanding environments. In this study, we manipulated the visual surround information during a collision avoidance task in order to investigate how young and elderly adults engage in sensory reweighting under conditions of visual anticipation. Sixteen healthy elderly (age: 71.5±4.9 years; height: 159.3±6.6 cm; mass: 73.3±3.3 kg) and 20 young (age: 22.8±3.3 years; height: 174.4±10.7 cm; mass: 70.1±13.9 kg) participants stood for 240 s on a force platform under two experimental conditions: quiet standing and standing while anticipating randomly approaching virtual objects to be avoided. During both tasks, the visual surround changed every 60 s from a stationary virtual scene (room) to either a moving room or darkness and then back to a stationary scene to evoke sensory reweighting processes. In quiet standing, elderly showed greater sway variability and were more severely affected by the removal or degradation of visual surround information when compared to young participants. During visual anticipation, sway variability was not different between the age groups. In addition, both young and elderly participants were similarly affected by the degradation or removal of the visual surround. These findings suggest that sensory reweighting in a dynamic virtual environment that evokes visual anticipation interacts with postural state anxiety regardless of age. Elderly show less efficient sensory reweighting in quiet standing due to greater visual field dependence possibly associated with fear of falling.

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Higher visual dependency increases balance control perturbation during cognitive task fulfilment in elderly people

Cited by 57 publications

References 16 publications

Postural control and attentional demand during adolescence

Postural control and attentional demand during adolescence

Dual-tasking postural control: Aging and the effects of cognitive demand in conjunction with focus of attention

Age-dependent modulation of sensory reweighting for controlling posture in a dynamic virtual environment

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