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Nature 425, 911-912 (30 October 2003) | doi:10.1038/425911a
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Medical technology: Balancing the unbalanced
Abstract
Elderly but healthy people are often seriously injured in falls. Exploiting the phenomenon of stochastic resonance, biological physicists have designed a shoe with a vibrating insole that helps maintain balance.
To stay upright, the human body uses exquisitely complicated and delicate feedback control, operating through the sensory and central nervous systems1. It does so in ways similar to a performer balancing a pole on a finger2, by applying minute forces and torques through muscles in the feet, ankles and knees.
- Center for Neurodynamics, University of Missouri at St Louis, St Louis, Missouri 63121, USA.
Email: mossf@umsl.edu - JDepartment of Neurology, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA.
Email: sp1ace@ace.bsd.uchicago.edu
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