Title
Arm Movement Effect On Balance
Abstract
The background research shows a high incidence of falls and loss of balance related injuries, which cause serious consequences to individual health and quality of life, as well as substantial healthcare impact in services and costs. The literature review emphasizes that arm movements have a potentially significant effect on balance, and indentifies the use of balance boards as a relevant and meaningful tool for dynamic balance evaluation. The primary objective of this initial study was to develop a method to test and evaluate the effect of arm movements on the maintenance of postural stability. Further we investigated the impact of dominant and non-dominant arms, the reaction time of arms, and the amount of activity of arms related to dynamic balance control. The study applied an accelerometer-based balance board test to measure postural stability as related to arm movements. The evaluation consists of accelerometers placed on the two arms and the balance board. Data were acquired from four different subjects and processed accordingly. The finding verified that arms play an important role in the improvement of balance. Our findings suggest that the dominant arm is more active in balance control and that the movement of arms most often occurs just prior to and during loss of balance. The results also suggest that the amount of arm movement activity directly relates to balance control and the use of the dominant arm.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1109/EMBC.2012.6346979
2012 ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE IEEE ENGINEERING IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY SOCIETY (EMBC)
Keywords
Field
DocType
gait analysis,health care,accelerometers
Postural stability,Accelerometer,Computer science,Physical therapy,Dynamic balance,Gait analysis,Balance board,Physical medicine and rehabilitation
Conference
Volume
ISSN
Citations 
2012
1557-170X
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
1
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Mohsen Shafeie100.34
Sara Manifar200.34
Matija Milosevic331.23
Kristiina M Valter McConville400.34