Selective utilization of spatial working memory resources during stance posture.

While it has been shown that visual imagery tasks interfere with balance control, the neural mechanisms underlying the interference are unclear. Within a healthy young adult population, we employed a dual-task methodology to investigate the role of visual working memory in stance postural control. The employment of specific visual object and visual spatial working memory cognitive tasks facilitated the selective activation of cortically dissociated working memory resources. Challenging postural sets did not significantly impact object working memory performance, but clearly degraded performance on a spatial working memory task, suggesting that interactions between stance postural control and visual working memory are limited to the spatial domain. Results demonstrated no significant effect of the cognitive tasks upon postural stability.