Elderly Use Proprioception Rather than Visual and Vestibular Cues for Postural Motor Control

Multiple factors have been proposed to contribute to the deficits of postural control in the elderly. They were summarized as sensory, motor, and higher-level adaptation deficits. Using a model-based approach, we aimed to identify which of these deficits mainly determine age-related changes in postural control. We analyzed postural control of 20 healthy elderly people with a mean age of 74 years. The findings were compared to data from 19 healthy young volunteers (mean age 28 years) and 16 healthy middle-aged volunteers (mean age 48 years). Postural control was characterized by spontaneous sway measures and measures of perturbed stance. Perturbations were induced by pseudorandom anterior–posterior tilts of the body support surface. We found that spontaneous sway amplitude and velocity were significantly larger, and sway frequencies were higher in elderly compared to young people. Body excursions as a function of tilt stimuli were clearly different in elderly compared to young people. Based on simple feedback model simulations, we found that elderly favor proprioceptive over visual and vestibular cues, other than younger subjects do. Moreover, we identified an increase in overall time delay challenging the feedback systems stability, and a decline in the amplitude of the motor feedback, probably representing weakness of the motor system. In general, these parameter differences between young and old may result from both deficits and compensation strategies in the elderly. Our model-based findings correlate well with deficits measured with clinical balance scores, which are widely used in clinical practice.