Ageing of the postural vertical Guillaume Barbieri & Anne-Sophie Gissot & Dominic Pérennou
Received: 9 January 2009 / Accepted: 27 July 2009 / Published online: 27 August 2009 # American Aging Association 2009
Abstract A postural vertical (PV) tilted backward has been put forward as a reason explaining the backward disequilibrium often observed in elderly fallers. This raises the question of a possible ageing process of the PV involving a backward tilt of verticality perception increasing with age. We have explored this hypothesis by measuring PV in pitch using the wheel paradigm in 87 healthy subjects aged from 20 to 97 years. The possibility that this physiological ageing accelerated in the second part of life was also analysed. Two indices were calculated: the mean orientation (PV-orient) and the disper-
Guillaume Barbieri and Anne-Sophie Gissot have contributed equally to the paper G. Barbieri : A.-S. Gissot : D. Pérennou Plate-forme d’Investigations Technologiques, CHU Dijon, INSERM U887, Dijon, France
sion (PV-uncert). The correlation between age and PV-orient was r=−0.2 (p
