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Keeping Balance with Vibrating Shoes
DrLudicrous writes "The NYTimes (free registration) is running an article that summerizes a forthcoming Physical Review Letters article. The article is about how low amplitude vibrations can help a person better sense when they are off balance. The authors write that they improved the balance of senior citizens by using small vibrations in the floor, making their sense of balance like that of a 25 year old. Apparently, this background noise helps to stimulate the neurons in the feet, making them more susceptible to detecting imbalances."
Ivan Pavlov would be proud. :)
So all the BASS played in a club is so a drunk can walk around trying to pick up chicks and still stand!
You can have it fast, accurate, or pretty. Pick any 2.
I was under the impression balance was primarily controlled by the inner ear... how much of an effect do your feet really have with this?
SIG: HUP
The article is about how low amplitude vibrations can help a person better sense when they are off balance.
I must use this new technology to disrupt Spiderman's Spidey Sense! Bring out the Megalatrogolagolotron!!!
(mutters to self) It must be his weakness.
...I'm standing and can't fall down
making their sense of balance like that of a 25 year old
perhaps they should qualify that with a sober 25 year old...
Researcher 2: *silence*
Researcher 1: This has nothing to do with my blind-the-senior project for better visual acuity project!
Current research is showing that a lot of the problems with the elderly and having accidents - vehicular or otherwise - is strongly correlated with attentional problems that they have. Their functional field of view suffers and, combined with other things is responsible for a lot of their problems.
So, while this vibrational shoe may have some balance effects, it's only part of the problem that they're fixing.
A planet where apes evolved from men? Long live the apes.
Now it's actually a Good Thing to crank the stereo at grandma's house. Of course, now that I think about it, it is grandma's house: the old Wallensack really can't get all that loud...
- DDT
So long, michael. Don't let the door hit you...
Balance of a 25 year old eh? I seem to recall spending a fair amount of time staggering around.
X)
Bad balence be damned! When I am a senior citizen I'll be driving around in one of those cool little cart things. Isn't that the whole reason to even grow old?
Stanley Feinbaum, professional journalist and master debater! God bless the USA!
But does it mean that after some time they will get used to it? And have even more problems walking on "just" a floor? Or, like with any stimulators, will they need increasing amplitude/freq over time?
This was in New Scientist a fortnight ago (and that on -publication- date)! What a slow pick-up... :)
Seems it has to be random movement noise because any signal which is both repetitive and apparently irrelevant gets 'ignored' pretty quickly by the brain - after all, there's all kinds of signals coming through all the time like the feeling of your socks on your feet that you're not consciously aware of (though bet you are now, eh?).
Also, it's not really about balance (which, people are right, is sited in the middle ear primarily) and more to do with thresholds for detection - having random movement / vibration happening anyway means that the body swaying off-balance is likely in one phase to be reinforced by the vibration enough that it goes above threshold and the body realises that there's uneven pressure in the feet and corrects it - neat, no?
Has anyone else heard about the research into people balancing sticks on their fingertips, and how this has to do with random neuro-muscular noise, but generated by the body instead?
I didn't realize that growing old was optional! Cool!
So, where do I go to tell them "No"?
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
Combining vibrators and old people in the same article, no good can come of this.
-- Any comments seen here are not mine, but a mixture of alchohol and lack of sleep.
It's possible, though the nervous problems MS suffers experience are different to those seen in old people. It's likely that something that makes it more likely for an off-balance signal to go above threshold in a normal patient is unlikely to do any harm in MS though.
Diseases like Parkinson's and Huntingdon's may well be more complicated, though, since they're caused not by problems in the periperhal nervous system but by breakdowns in the systems in the brain that control movment.
Nothing new or magical in the theory, but it is a really cool application. Kudos to the researchers.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
If shaking the floor makes it easier for old people to get around then does this mean that California will become the new retirement playground for senior citizens?
:-)
California, the state where Quake is more than just a game
Erm.... I don't know where you learnt your sensory neurophysiology...
Light hitting the back of the eye causes (in the roughest possible terms) a change in electrical potential in the light sensitive cells, which is transmitted down neurons in the optic nerve (as electrical pulses) into the visual cortex of the brain, where it's interpreted in exceptionally clever ways we don't really understand. No vibrations to be seen, though.
Oh, I see.
This is just the next version of the iBrator.
Now I've got a picture in my head of dozens of seniors, linked arm in arm, moving helplessly
up and down the aisles at Walmart...
I'm sorry, I cant help it...it's just the way I am.
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
It isn't the vibrational energy that is stimulating the neurons in the feet. Instead it's the additional quantity of information (that can be conveyed to the brain along aging pathways), by mixing in some noise. It may sound counterintuitive that noise can increase the resolution of a signal, but it makes sense. Imagine a signal is quantized in steps, and a sample could possibly fall between the discretely measurable points of sensitivity, and get lost. By adding noise enough to 'blur' the sample into a range that will always cross one sample boundary, then it will be detected more frequently. Even if it's blurred to cross two or three at a time, the relative activation of the seperate 'sensor nodes' allows an accurate determination of the actual quantity being sampled [given that the sampling resolution sufficiently exceeds the time resolution of changes in the actual value being sampled].
It's called stochastic ressonance.
It's used in some analog to digital converters, and in many other places in engineering, it's been used in electron microscopes, in radio telescopes.
And now, it turns out, it looks like it's used in people! What is really interesting is the question of whether or not the healthy adult body actually has automatic noise generators itself, for precisely this purpose, which may have weakened in the case of the elderly.
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
I could sure use some smart shoes or white-noise socks, my sense of balance is destroyed. I had an acoustic neuroma, when they remove it they cut your vestibular nerve in one ear, otherwise you have permanent vertigo. The best way I can explain it, is that my sense of balance is now mono instead of stereo. My doctor said there are three components to balance, pressure feedback through the skin, position feedback from the body and skeleton, and visual feedback. The doc said my sense of balance is now "visually dependent" so I have to be able to see clearly or I can lose my balance. When it's dark or the footing is rough or loose gravel, I stumble around like I'm drunk. This is horribly embarrasing, but more than that, it's a health risk. I took one balance test and barely passed, and I asked what it measured, the physiotherapist said it is to determine if you should use a cane or a walker. Poor scores meant a dramatically higher likelihood of broken arms, legs, and hips from falls, and subsequently, greater mortality.
N-n-no, darling, they're for your feet.
(Sorry.)
Daddy, why is Grandma sitting on the floor and smiling like that?
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