Working in Movement

We all have the sense that as we age, it seems like the sensory parts of us start to wear out; vision dims, hearing lessens, etc. We don't normally think of touch and proprioception also wearing out, or what this may mean. But when we start to get less information from the touch receptors on the bottoms of the feet and the proprioceptors in the muscles lose their ability to, out balance can change, mostly not for the better. Falling is not fun, especially when it results in serious injury.

Somatic learning disciplines cope with this situation by helping people develop their touch and proprioception with gentle movements and keenly directed attention aimed at increasing a person's sensitivity to movement and contact with supporting surfaces. Noise Improves Balance reports on another approach for dealing with this precarious situation, one involving a creative use of noise as an aid to balance.

Engineers at Boston University and Afferent tested rigged up some gel insoles, some containing small electric motors, and then had people in their seventies and twenties stand on them. The engineers measured how much the subjects swayed while standing still, a measure of balance and stability. The electric motors introduced a small amount of noise into the sensory systems of the participants.

Both the young and older groups' balance was better with the noisy insoles than those without the noise. But the older group's balance improved markedly. In fact, the elderly group swayed about the same amount as the younger group did without the benefit of noise!

Moshe Feldenkrais used to cite the Weber-Fechner law as a way of improving sensitivity to movement and the general goings on in the sensory motor system. W-F holds that the ability to sense a stimulus largely depends on the ratio of sensation between background effort and the new stimulus. If you reduce the amount of effort you're making, you can learn to detect pretty subtle differences in your movements. The key to Feldenkrais was reducing effort to increase sensitivity.

But the noisy gel insole takes the other approach of increasing the intensity of a stimulus relative to background effort. Pretty clever.