Visuo-postural adaptation during the acquisition of a visually guided weight-shifting task: age-related differences in global and local dynamics

The effects of aging on the acquisition of a novel visuo-postural coordination task were addressed at two levels: (a) changes in the intersegmental coordination (local dynamics) (b) changes in the coupling of postural sway to the visual driving stimulus (global dynamics). Twelve elderly (age: 71.2 ± 6.4 years; height: 169.3 ± 3.8 cm; mass: 72.4 ± 6.1 kg) and 12 young women (age: 27.1 ± 4.9 years; height: 178.3 ± 2.9 cm; mass: 56.7 ± 4.1 kg) practiced a visually guided Weight-Shifting (WS) task while standing on a dual force platform. The participants were asked to keep the vertical force applied by each limb within a ±30% force boundary that was visually specified by a target sine-wave signal. Practice consisted of three blocks of five trials performed in 1-day, followed by a block of five trials performed 24 h later. Ground reaction forces and segment (shank, pelvis, and upper trunk) angular kinematics were synchronously sampled through an A/D acquisition board and further analyzed employing spectral and coherence analysis. Elderly women had longer WS cycles, lower response gain, and higher within-trial variability, suggesting a weaker coupling between the visual stimulus and the response force. Spectral analysis of the ground reaction forces confirmed that regardless of age, visuo-postural coupling improved with practice. However, the recruitment of local degrees of freedom was different between the two age groups. With practice, young performers increased peak coherence between the pelvis and the upper trunk and reduced peak power of segment oscillations in the pitch direction. On the other hand, elderly women decreased active upper trunk rotation while shifting control to the lower limb. It is suggested that different functional coordination solutions are possible for attaining the same overall task goal. These solutions are determined by age-related constraints in the physiological systems supporting postural control.