Maintaining balance seems like an automatic action, but behind this daily gesture there works a complex network of mechanisms that involve the brainmuscles and sensory systems.
A new scientific study led by the University College de Dublin in Ireland revealed that, as people age, the brain must make greater and greater effort to maintain body stability.
The research showed that older adults recruit more brain activity to respond to disturbances of balance than young people.
However, this additional work does not necessarily improve recovery capacity, but is often associated with less efficient responses and greater vulnerability to falls.
The findings help explain Why the risk of falls increases with age, even in people who retain good mobility.
According to researchers, the body tries to compensate for the natural deterioration of some systems, but this compensation has limits and can become less and less effective over the years.
What researchers discovered about balance and aging
To analyze how the organism responds when it loses stability, scientists studied What happens when a person experiences a sudden disturbancesimilar to the feeling that the ground is moving under your feet.
The results showed clear differences between younger and older adults. In young people, balance recovery depends mainly on automatic mechanisms controlled by brain regions that act very quickly.
On the other hand, in older people a more intense participation of brain areas is observed associated with the conscious control of movements.
The researchers verified that this additional intervention appears even in the face of slight alterations in posture. In other words, tasks that could previously be solved almost automatically now require greater brain supervision.
According to specialists, this phenomenon reflects that Aging affects the quality of sensory information the brain uses to maintain stability, forcing it to work harder to achieve the same goal.
Why this finding can help prevent falls
One of the most relevant aspects of the study is that it provides a biological explanation for a problem that affects millions of older people around the world. The authors point out that the brain retains the ability to compensate for part of the deterioration associated with aging.
However, the more you rely on conscious processes to control posture, the less efficient the system responsible for maintaining stability becomes. The research also allowed the development of a method capable of inferring how the nervous system is acting from muscle activity recorded by sensors placed on the skin.
This tool could facilitate early detection of alterations in balance control without resorting to complex techniques to measure brain activity. Understand how the brain’s strategies change Maintaining stability is key to preventing and reducing the risk of falls, one of the main causes of injuries and loss of autonomy during aging.
