Inducing unstable walking conditions through visual and auditory stimuli.
Tomomasa Ohara, Chong Yu Zheng, Shinji Murata and 1 others
PMID 38832217WHAT IT FOUND
Visual disturbance alone, and visual disturbance with sound, made young healthy walkers take shorter, wider, more variable steps than normal walking.
Adding a 0.8-second rhythm sometimes worsened coordination further. This is a lab finding, not evidence for treating falls in patients.
Key findings
01Visual disturbance alone made young healthy walkers take shorter steps, spend longer in each step, widen their steps, and show more variability and poorer coordination than normal walking.
02Combining visual disturbance with sound also shortened steps, widened steps, and increased variability and coordination instability compared with normal walking.
03Adding a 0.8-second rhythm to visual disturbance increased some variability and coordination instability measures relative to visual disturbance alone.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
The participants were healthy young adults, not older adults or people with balance problems, so the findings do not show what would happen in patients. Only 4 young healthy males and 2 young healthy females took part in Experiment 1, and 6 healthy young adult males took part in Experiment 2. Walking was measured over a short 5-m segment, which the authors say may have made step width and variability estimates less stable. The study used a support robot and brakes to reduce fall risk, so the setting was not ordinary walking. The paper did not test whether these stimuli prevent falls or improve balance in patients.
Declared interests
The authors reported no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as evidence that visual or audio stimuli prevent falls or can be used as therapy for older adults. The participants were healthy young adults, and the study only showed that lab-made visual and sound disturbances made walking less stable.