Influence of visual feedback on successive control mechanisms in upright quiet stance in humans assessed by fractional Brownian motion modelling.

An up-to-date way to model the centre of pressure (CP) trajectories may consist in using fractional Brownian motion (fBm). By doing so, one may note that standing still is in fact controlled by two separate and successive mechanisms. The point raised in this study concerns the nature of these control mechanisms and their level of interaction. Following this idea, visual feedback (VFB), which is known to affect postural control by significantly decreasing sway magnitudes, was used. Twelve healthy adults, instructed to stand as still as possible, were tested under this VFB protocol (via a PC screen). In order to model the CP trajectories as fBm, variograms (mean square distances, MSD, expressed as a function of increasing time intervals deltat) were bi-logarithmically plotted. The main visual effect of VFB on these variograms concerns longest latency scaling regimes which reveal less stochastic and consequently more accurate control (P < 0.05 and P < 0.01 for X and Y components, respectively). An increase in the MSD of the transition point, which corresponds to the switch between the two control mechanisms, is also noted (P < 0.05). Overall, evidence is provided from this data that long latency scaling regimes do operate through a feedback process. Interestingly, this improved determinism in feedback control in turn induces a similar effect on the control operating over the shortest deltat. Thus, by privileging a control strategy based on feedback mechanisms, VFB in turn would make the subjects quicker in their initial displacement in order to reach a position capable of initiating a feedback mechanism.