Aging and selective sensorimotor strategies in the regulation of upright balance

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Abstract
The maintenance of upright equilibrium is essentially a sensorimotor integration task. The central nervous system (CNS) has to generate appropriate and complex motor responses based on the selective and rapid integration of sensory information from multiple sources. Since each sensory system has its own coordinate framework, specific time delay and reliability, sensory conflicts may arise and represent situations in which the CNS has to recalibrate the weight attributed to each particular sensory input. The resolution of sensory conflicts may represent a particular challenge for older adults given the age-related decline in the integrity of many postural regulating systems, including musculoskeletal and sensory systems, as well as neural processing and conduction of information. The effects of aging and adaptation (by repeated exposures) on the capability of the CNS to select pertinent sensory information and resolve sensory conflicts were thus investigated with virtual reality (VR) in the present study.