VIBRATION AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO WALKING INSOLES
You feel unstable on two legs? Vibrating insoles in your shoes will cause random noise, enhancing weak neural signals from the feet to the brain, which keep a person balance equilibrium when it is in the upright position.
When someone leans in any one direction, the pressure on the sole of the foot on that side increases. Typically, the nervous system responds to these changes automatically by activating the muscles of the legs, and automatically corrects the position of the person in balance. But in some people, especially the elderly, the system equilibrium is sometimes broken, and nerve signals sent to the brain, can cause either a stronger response, or belated. As a result, a person can lose their balance and fall.
This condition is also common, and when a person is in a state of intoxication.
Jim Collins and his colleagues at Boston University, wondered, could the people with impaired coordination to benefit from the resulting stochastic (random) resonance - an effect that makes the weak signal more easily detected when it occurs on a background of random noise? Researchers have built a platform that vibrates at random, and asked for volunteers to try to resist it. From the change in force fluctuations platform, they found that the stochastic fluctuations increase the reaction arising from people#39;s feet, and help people to maintain balance.
When the platform was then vibrate more gently, the reaction of stabilizing the feet of the people to be less in every direction, even though they can not consciously feel the change in motion. This is evident in the difference between older and younger participants in the experiment twenties people.
The increase in information coming from our feet, helps us to improve balance control of body balance. In this sense, standing on wobbly mount bare feet, a person is more stable than in the shoes as best experiences? Footing |.
The nervous system is very quick to learn to ignore the signals are stable, so if you create a device that would give the signal gain to the soles of our feet, it would work only if the information was true nature of noise.
Previously, scientists have expressed the idea that the human nervous system produces its own noise to help with the tasks of balancing. But the research team for the first time Collins has proved that additional artificial random signals can enhance the balance of equilibrium.
Now scientists hope to create a vibrating insoles that could be worn in your shoes people with poor coordination of movements. But this will somehow solve the problem of food such insoles for shoes because the hang heavy set of batteries or accumulators v stupid thing.
If scientists find a way to rationalize the power supply batteries or other locations, such as on the body or in a pocket, then these insoles will help people with canes to walk normally again.
Contact information:
Claire Bowles, claire.bowles @ rbi.co.uk, 44-207-331-2751, New Scientist
