Posture control, aging, and attention resources: models and posture-analysis methods.
This paper reviews the literature on balance and cognitive function in normal aging. The first part provides a general background of dual tasking (postural performance under a concurrent cognitive activity) and summarizes the main relevant models capable of explaining the poorer postural performance of older-healthy adults compared to younger-healthy adults: the cross-domain competition model, the nonlinear interaction model, and the task-prioritization model. In the second part, we discuss the main limitations of the traditional-posturographic analyses used in most of the dual-task investigations and explain how these can account for some discrepancies found in the literature. New methods based on the stabilogram-diffusion analysis and the wavelet transform are proposed as better approaches to understand posture control. The advantages of these new methods are illustrated in young adults and elderly people performing a simple postural task (quiet standing) simultaneously with a mental or a spatial task.
Lacour
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M
UMR 6149, pôle 3C, centre de St-Charles, CNRS, université de Provence, Case B, 3, place Victor-Hugo, 13331 Marseille cedex 03, France. michel.lacour@univ-provence.fr
Bernard-Demanze
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L
Dumitrescu
M
M
D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008959:Models, Neurological; D015233:Models, Statistical; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics; D004856:Postural Balance / Q000502:physiology*; D011187:Posture / Q000502:physiology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology