Balance Retraining: Creating Effective Interventions through Sensory Weighting

Course overview

Elderly patients often present with impaired integration and use of somatosensory, visual, and vestibular information, even when these systems are providing normal input to the central nervous system. This course introduces the concept of sensory weighting during real-world, functional activities with analysis of how people use somatosensory and visual information to keep their balance during everyday tasks. Common abnormal patterns of sensory weighting are described. Several treatment interventions that target retraining of the appropriate balance system in a given environmental context are described for each of the abnormal patterns. Case studies are used to illustrate examples of each of the common abnormal patterns of sensory weighting.