Anticipatory Postural Adjustments in the Frail Older Adults When Postural Stability is Manipulated

Background: Anticipatory Postural Adjustments (APAs) are importantly affected by age and may represent restrictions for functional independence. Previous studies have already highlighted some delayed APAs during self-generated rapid arm movements in aged adults, as well as in cases of non-optimal aging, such as in frail older adults. In young (Y) adults, it was also previously demonstrated that changing the postural stability (i.e. seated vs. upright posture) affects the motor planning and APAs. Considering the clinical relevance of these balance tasks in the functional independence in frail older adults (FOA), and the lack of literature about this task, the present study aimed to investigate the impact of these different conditions of postural stability on APAs in FOA. Methods: In this paper, participants executed an arm-pointing task to reach a diode immediately after it turned on, under different conditions of stability (seated with and without feet support and in upright posture). Results: The main finding of this study is that the adopted posture and body stabilization in FOA did not reflect differences in APAs or kinematic features. In addition, they did not present an optimal APA, since postural muscles are recruited simultaneously with the deltoid. Conclusion: Thus, FOA seem to use a single non-optimal motor plan to assist the task performance and counterbalance perturbation forces, in which they present similar APAs and do not modify their kinematics features according to the body stabilization (i.e. less challenging task present greater finger velocity).