In: Journal of Neurophysiology, 2018, vol. 120, no. 3, p. 1010–1016
Cortical excitability increases during the performance of more difficult postural tasks. However, it is possible that changes in postural threat associated with more difficult tasks may in themselves lead to alterations in the neural strategies underlying postural control. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine whether changes in postural threat are responsible for the...
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In: Human Movement Science, 2018, vol. 59, p. 170–177
Postural control undergoes rapid changes during child development. However, the influence of balance training (BT) on the compensation of perturbations has not yet been investigated in children. For this purpose, young (6.7 ± 0.6 years) and old children (12.0 ± 0.4 years) were exposed to externally induced anticipated (direction known) and non-anticipated (direction unknown)...
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In: Brain Stimulation, 2018, p. -
Background: Motor imagery and actual movements share overlapping activation of brain areas but little is known about task-specific activation of distinct motor pathways during mental simulation of movements. For real contractions, it was demonstrated that the slow(er) motor pathways are activated differently in ballistic compared to tonic contractions but it is unknown if this also holds true...
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In: Neuroscience, 2018, vol. 373, p. 106–112
Research has indicated that at the onset of a finger movement, unwanted contractions of adjacent muscles are prevented by inhibiting the cortical areas representing these muscles. This so-called surround inhibition (SI) seems relevant for the performance of selective finger movements but may not be necessary for tasks involving functional coupling between different finger muscles. Therefore,...
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In: Scientific Reports, 2018, vol. 8, no. 1, p. 1085
To further investigate the mechanism of surround inhibition (SI) and to determine whether adopting different attentional strategies might have an impact on the modulation of SI, the effects of adopting an external (EF) or internal focus of attention (IF) on SI and motor performance were investigated. While performing an index flexion with either an EF or IF, transcranial magnetic stimulation...
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In: Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 2018, vol. 12, p. -
Aging is associated with a shift from an automatic to a more cortical postural control strategy, which goes along with deteriorations in postural stability. Although balance training has been shown to effectively counteract these behavioral deteriorations, little is known about the effect of balance training on brain activity during postural tasks in older adults. We, therefore, assessed...
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In: Neuroscience, 2017, vol. 365, no. Supplement C, p. 12–22
Little is known about how the central nervous system prepares postural responses differently in anticipated compared to non-anticipated perturbations. To investigate this, participants were exposed to translational and rotational perturbations presented in a blocked (anticipated) and a random (non-anticipated) design. The preparatory setting (‘central set’) was measured by H-reflexes,...
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In: Journal of Negative Results in BioMedicine, 2017, vol. 16, p. 11
Background: While the positive effect of balance training on age-related impairments in postural stability is well-documented, the neural correlates of such training adaptations in older adults remain poorly understood. This study therefore aimed to shed more light on neural adaptations in response to balance training in older adults.Methods: Postural stability as well as spinal reflex and...
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