Sensory Interaction and Balance Control During Standing and Walking Under Challenging Conditions in Healthy Young and Older Adults

This project is designed to: a) develop a new test called UHasselt Locomotor Sensory Integration Test (UHLSINT) which would allow us to evaluate sensory interaction process in locomotion assess whether Locomotor CTSIB and to investigate whether UHLSINT is a reliable test to evaluate sensory interaction in both young and older adults, b) evaluate the difference in sensory interaction and balance performance between standing and walking between both young and older adults, c) examine the changes in sensory interaction process under challenging conditions such as perturbations, dual-task, and when both are present between both young and older adults, d) examine the association between overall fall risk defined by the single-large perturbations and sensory interaction processes used during all the trials in both age groups.

In order to achieve these aims, 10 trials will be conducted:

Trial 1- Single-Large Perturbation in Standing Trial 2- Single-Large Perturbation in Walking Trial 3- Instrumented CTSIB Trial 4- Locomotor CTSIB Trial 5- Instrumented CTSIB + Perturbations Trial 6- Locomotor CTSIB + Perturbations Trial 7- Instrumented CTSIB + Auditory Stroop Test Trial 8- Locomotor CTSIB + Auditory Stroop Test Trial 9- Instrumented CTSIB + Perturbations + Auditory Stroop Test Trial 10- Locomotor CTSIB + Perturbations + Auditory Stroop Test

Two different treadmill perturbations will be applied in addition to the Instrumented CTSIB and UHLSINT: a) slip perturbations, b) continuous perturbations. An auditory stroop task will be applied in relevant trials.

All of the trials will be performed in CAREN High-End Systems (Motek Medical BV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands) which is a motion capture system that is equipped with a treadmill mounted on a 6 degree of freedom motion base, a 360º dome-shaped virtual reality (VR) screen, and a marker-based movement analysis system.