著者

寺本 渉

出版者

日本基礎心理学会

雑誌

基礎心理学研究 (ISSN:02877651)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.39, no.1, pp.80-89, 2020-09-30 (Released:2020-11-18)

参考文献数

49

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Falls are a significant concern for older adults because they can sometimes drive the development of dementia. With age, sensory noise increases at the input level, while the precision, frequency, and diversity of physical movements decrease at the output level. These changes could prevent the brain from appropriately reweighting several sensory signals for body perception and action and from recalibrating representations related to the body and body movements, resulting in increased risk of falling. In fact, our data demonstrate that the sense of body ownership of the foot (but not the hand), peripersonal space representations, and motor imagery of gait are differently established between older adults with a higher risk of falling and those with a lower risk. Physical exercise is not only useful for the prevention of muscle weakness, the enhancement of the cardiovascular systems, and an increase in brain blood flow, but also contributes to the statistical reduction of sensory noise because several sensory feedback signals are available, enabling appropriate recalibration. However, physical exercise is sometimes unsafe for older adults who already have physical weakness. Fall prevention programs implemented through a virtual reality system would provide them with another exercise tool to effectively stimulate the sensory-motor circuits in the brain and recalibrate their multisensory integration process and body-related representations in a safe, diversified, and individually tuned environment.