Neuro-otology Unit, Department of Brain Sciences, Imperial College London, London, UK; Universidad del Desarrollo, Escuela de Fonoaudiología, Facultad de Medicina Clínica Alemana. Santiago, Chile; Departamento de Fonoaudiología, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
Neuro-otology Unit, Department of Brain Sciences, Imperial College London, London, UK.
Gait Posture. 2022 May;94:1-8. doi: 10.1016/j.gaitpost.2022.02.015. Epub 2022 Feb 17.
Modulation of postural control strategies and heightened perceptual ratings of instability when exposed to postural threats, illustrates the association between anxiety and postural control.
Here we test whether modulating prior expectations can engender postural-related anxiety which, in turn, may impair postural control and dissociate the well-established relationship between sway and subjective instability.
We modulated expectations of the difficulty posed by an upcoming postural task via priming. In the visual priming condition, participants watched a video of an actor performing the task with either a stable or unstable performance, before themselves proceeding with the postural task. In the verbal priming paradigm, participants were given erroneous verbal information regarding the amplitude of the forthcoming platform movement, or no prior information.
Following the visual priming, the normal relationship between trunk sway and subjective instability was preserved only in those individuals that viewed the stable but not the unstable actor. In the verbal priming experiment we observed an increase in subjective instability and anxiety during task performance in individuals who were erroneously primed that sled amplitude would increase, when in fact it did not.
Our findings show that people's subjective experiences of instability and anxiety during a balancing task are powerfully modulated by priming. The contextual provision of erroneous cognitive priors dissociates the normally 'hard wired' relationship between objective measures and subjective ratings of sway. Our findings have potential clinical significance for the development of enhanced cognitive retraining in patients with balance disorders, e.g. via modifying expectations.
在暴露于姿势威胁时，姿势控制策略的调节和不稳定性感知的增加表明了焦虑与姿势控制之间的关联。
在这里，我们测试了调节先前的期望是否可以产生与姿势相关的焦虑，而这种焦虑反过来又可能损害姿势控制，并分离出与摇摆和主观不稳定性之间的既定关系。
我们通过启动来调节对即将进行的姿势任务难度的期望。在视觉启动条件下，参与者观看了一个演员执行任务的视频，该演员的表现要么稳定，要么不稳定，然后再进行姿势任务。在口头启动范式中，参与者获得了有关即将到来的平台运动幅度的错误口头信息，或者没有提供任何信息。
在视觉启动之后，只有那些观看稳定但不稳定演员的人，才能保持躯干摇摆与主观不稳定性之间的正常关系。在口头启动实验中，我们观察到在那些被错误启动的人在任务执行过程中，即实际上平台幅度不会增加的情况下，主观不稳定性和焦虑感增加。
我们的发现表明，人们在平衡任务中的不稳定性和焦虑的主观体验可以通过启动来有力地调节。错误认知优先的上下文提供分离了客观测量与摇摆的主观评定之间的正常“硬连线”关系。我们的发现对平衡障碍患者的增强认知再训练的发展具有潜在的临床意义，例如通过调节期望。
