Abstract

JUNIOR, Paulo Freitas  and  BARELA, José A.. Changes in Elderly Postural Control System Functioning: Use of Visual Information. Rev. Port. Cien. Desp. [online]. 2006, vol.6, n.1, pp.94-105. ISSN 1645-0523.

Aging process has led human beings to exhibit changes in postural control. Such changes have been considered to occur due to problems in the sensory systems to provide information about body position on space, and also to problems in the motor system to produce adequate and coordinate muscle activation to maintain the body in a desirable position. These changes would lead elderly people to decline their performance in postural control and would be associated to the increase of incidence in falls of this population. However, this relationship between sensory and motor changes, and the decrease of the performance in postural control  is poorly understood; more important, functioning problems of the postural control system would not be related to changes on each one of these systems. It could be related with changes in the relationship between sensory information and motor action in elderly people during the maintenance of the upright stance. Thus, the purposes of this paper are to present and to argue main aspects related to postural control, with emphasis in the relationship between visual information and motor action, and how these aspects can help us to understand the changes observed in the postural control in elderly people.

Keywords : postural control; equilibrium; aging; perception-action coupling; elderly; moving room.

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