Grant: Research Tools and Instruments

Standing upright is almost effortless. In some ways, our standing balance is like our breathing: both can happen involuntarily, yet we can be aware of our balance and breathing, and take conscious control if needed. The links between our conscious perception of upright posture and its automatic control have been recently questioned. Critical issues have been raised: How do our brain and nervous system adapt to changing postural environments and challenges (e.g. standing on firm ground vs on a stand-up paddle board)? What sensory information does our nervous system use to make adjustments? Are we consciously aware of the signals used by our nervous system to maintain and adapt our balance? The requested equipment will enable us to address these key research questions that could not be answered without it. We will build a one-of-a-kind robotic balance simulator (combined with a non-conductive force platform) that will allow us to test our balance system's ability to adapt and characterize our perception of these adaptations. We will test this adaptability by breaking the close link between the nervous system's motor output from its mechanical outcomes. The robotic balance simulator will permit us to explore the limits of our strategies to control balance, and reveal key features of how our brain encodes, decodes and makes use of sensory information to stand upright. In addition, the custom-designed robotic balance simulator will allow us to record activity directly from nerves in awake humans to determine the neural information underlying the control of standing balance. This represents a research frontier that will be enabled by the unique design of the robotic balance simulator. The robotic balance simulator requested in this proposal will accelerate innovative discoveries, allowing our research team to describe the neural information that is involved in standing balance. The novel findings enabled by this unique equipment will foster new modelling avenues for the control of standing in robots designed to mimic humans. The immediate beneficiaries of this work will be researchers and research trainees working in the areas of neuroscience, physiology, balance control, computer science and engineering. These innovations will also benefit clinical researchers and clinicians, informing them about the limits and adaptability of our nervous system in controlling balance and ultimately will paving the way for the development of new balance training and rehabilitation strategies.