Chapter 15 The Effect of Eye Closure on Postural Sway: Converging Evidence from Children and a Parkinson Patient

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on postural sway and discusses what happens to performance when one attempts to stand with eyes closed versus eyes open. Sway is the phenomenon that results from continual small deviations from the vertical and subsequent attempts to correct these deviations. When standing quietly, all human beings sway and this has formed the basis of many experimental tests and clinical assessments for over a century. When normal adults are asked to stand as still as possible in a comfortable stance, performance with eyes closed is slightly worse than performance with eyes open. The chapter describes the typical methodology of postural sway studies and examines the nature of the dependent measures routinely used for assessing postural sway. One of the most common measures of postural control, both clinically and behaviorally, is the Romberg test of quiet standing postural sway.