Visual oscillation effects on dynamic balance control in people with multiple sclerosis. J Neuroeng Rehabil 2022 Aug 17;19(1):90
Date
08/18/2022Pubmed ID
35978431Pubmed Central ID
PMC9382748DOI
10.1186/s12984-022-01060-0Scopus ID
2-s2.0-85136056967 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site) 1 CitationAbstract
BACKGROUND: People with multiple sclerosis (PwMS) have balance deficits while ambulating through environments that contain moving objects or visual manipulations to perceived self-motion. However, their ability to parse object from self-movement has not been explored. The purpose of this research was to examine the effect of medial-lateral oscillations of the visual field and of objects within the scene on gait in PwMS and healthy age-matched controls using virtual reality (VR).
METHODS: Fourteen PwMS (mean age 49 ± 11 years, functional gait assessment score of 27.8 ± 1.8, and Berg Balance scale score 54.7 ± 1.5) and eleven healthy controls (mean age: 53 ± 12 years) participated in this study. Dynamic balance control was assessed while participants walked on a treadmill at a self-selected speed while wearing a VR headset that projected an immersive forest scene. Visual conditions consisted of (1) no visual manipulations (speed-matched anterior/posterior optical flow), (2) 0.175 m mediolateral translational oscillations of the scene that consisted of low pairing (0.1 and 0.31 Hz) or (3) high pairing (0.15 and 0.465 Hz) frequencies, (4) 5 degree medial-lateral rotational oscillations of virtual trees at a low frequency pairing (0.1 and 0.31 Hz), and (5) a combination of the tree and scene movements in (3) and (4).
RESULTS: We found that both PwMS and controls exhibited greater instability and visuomotor entrainment to simulated mediolateral translation of the visual field (scene) during treadmill walking. This was demonstrated by significant (p < 0.05) increases in mean step width and variability and center of mass sway. Visuomotor entrainment was demonstrated by high coherence between center of mass sway and visual motion (magnitude square coherence = ~ 0.5 to 0.8). Only PwMS exhibited significantly greater instability (higher step width variability and center of mass sway) when objects moved within the scene (i.e., swaying trees).
CONCLUSION: Results suggest the presence of visual motion processing errors in PwMS that reduced dynamic stability. Specifically, object motion (via tree sway) was not effectively parsed from the observer's self-motion. Identifying this distinction between visual object motion and self-motion detection in MS provides insight regarding stability control in environments with excessive external movement, such as those encountered in daily life.
Author List
Riem L, Beardsley SA, Obeidat AZ, Schmit BDAuthors
Scott Beardsley PhD Associate Professor in the Biomedical Engineering department at Marquette UniversityAhmed Zayed Obeidat MD, PhD Associate Professor in the Neurology department at Medical College of Wisconsin
Brian Schmit PhD Professor in the Biomedical Engineering department at Marquette University
MESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold
AdultAged
Exercise Test
Gait
Humans
Middle Aged
Multiple Sclerosis
Physical Therapy Modalities
Postural Balance
Walking
