If you read articles related to this research, it seems that what's happening here is a physical threshold effect in individual collections of peripheral neurons rather than anything happening primarily in the brain (in any case, balance control only very very rarely goes conscious - that moment, when you think 'shit, I'm going to fall over and pour this latte across the floor!') The stuff on attention is really interesting, though.
Aye. And also, the vibrations are below what the body can be conscious of - they're below threshold themselves. It's only in combination with the body's own movements through the world that they're useful.
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.
I think the real breakthrough here is that they found neurons in our feet!
Um, neurons are the fundamental building block of the nervous system. Yup, they're everywhere. In your fingers, in your toes... why, how did you -think- signals got to and from your extremities... oh, no, don't answer that...
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?
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If you read articles related to this research, it seems that what's happening here is a physical threshold effect in individual collections of peripheral neurons rather than anything happening primarily in the brain (in any case, balance control only very very rarely goes conscious - that moment, when you think 'shit, I'm going to fall over and pour this latte across the floor!') The stuff on attention is really interesting, though.
Aye. And also, the vibrations are below what the body can be conscious of - they're below threshold themselves. It's only in combination with the body's own movements through the world that they're useful.
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.
I think the real breakthrough here is that they found neurons in our feet!
Um, neurons are the fundamental building block of the nervous system. Yup, they're everywhere. In your fingers, in your toes... why, how did you -think- signals got to and from your extremities... oh, no, don't answer that...
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?