Emory University’s Lena Ting and colleagues investigated how brain and muscle activity during balance recovery changes with age and Parkinson’s disease.
Previously, Ting’s research group found that when they pulled the rug out from under young people to trigger balance recovery, these people experienced immediate involuntary brainstem and muscle responses, followed by a second wave of brain and muscle activity with more difficult balance disorders. In this new study of older adults with and without Parkinson’s disease, e-neuroresearchers found that these populations had larger brain responses and more muscle signals, even when the balance deficit was small.
In these populations, restoring balance requires more energy and brain involvement. They found that when more brain activity is required to balance, the ability to restore balance decreases.. ”
Lena Ting, Emory University
The researchers also found that when older adults activated a muscle to restore balance, the muscles on the opposite side became stiffer. The degree of stiffness in people’s muscles was also associated with decreased balance ability.
The researchers emphasize that their technical approach may have clinical implications as a way to more accurately measure whether a person is at risk of insufficient balance recovery. Ting notes that there is still work to be done to optimize this approach, but adds, “We may be able to determine whether someone’s brain activity has increased simply by assessing their muscle activity after the rug is pulled out from under them.” This method could help identify at-risk people before they fall, who could benefit from balance training and exercise.
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Reference magazines:
Böbinger, S.E. Others. (2026). In patients with and without Parkinson’s disease, cortical-mediated muscle responses to balance perturbations increase with the magnitude of the perturbation. e-neuro. DOI: 10.1523/ENEURO.0423-25.2026. https://www.eneuro.org/content/early/2026/03/16/ENEURO.0423-25.2026
