Effect of Adaptive Training for Balance Recovery

Summary

The long-term objective of this research is a prophylactic approach that can reduce the incidence of falls and the resulting injuries among older adults at risk and thus reduce its escalating medical cost. This project explores perturbation training through the use of treadmill device and a motor learning approach, in which experience with slip-like perturbation generated by that treadmill is used to prepare the motor system to develop and then put to use fall-resisting skills outside of training environment (cross-environment transfer). The computer-controlled treadmill is portable, safe and easy to operate, thus conducive for use in clinics or community centers. The study logically builds on and complements the team's previous and current research programs, and will further test that after such a single session, older adults at risk can retain such cross-environment transfer and reduce their likelihood of falls in everyday living for the next 6 to 12 months. Finally, the study will explore that such reduction of falls does not come merely from these persons' familiarity with the training or testing setup, protocol and environments.

Conditions

• Balance, Postural
• Prevention, Accident

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

treadmill slip perturbation

Group A will receive perturbation training on a treadmill with precisely controlled slip-like displacements and then encounter an unannounced novel slip during over-ground walking.

BEHAVIORAL

treadmill training placebo

An age-matched control group (Group B) will receive only placebo training (on the same treadmill for the same duration but without perturbation) but encounter an identical novel slip during their over-ground walking.

BEHAVIORAL

observation training

An age-matched observation-training group (Group C) will watch a training video and slides. When exposed to an identical novel slip in over-ground walking, they will know where and how the slip is going to occur and how to resist a fall.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Institute on Aging (NIA)

  collaborator NIH

• University of Illinois at Chicago

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Tanvi Bhatt, PhD · University of Illinois at Chicago

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

65 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2014-06-30

Primary Completion

2022-12-15

Completion

2022-12-15

Countries

• United States

Study Locations