Adaptation of vibration-induced postural sway in individuals with Parkinson's disease

Postural control requires accurate integration of visual, vestibular, cutaneous, and proprioceptive sensory information. Previous research suggests that patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) may have difficulty with this integration process, particularly involving incongruent visual information. The purpose of this study was to determine whether PD patients also show difficulty in adaptation to erroneous proprioceptive information. Postural reactions to soleus muscle vibration were explored in 8 PD patients, 8 healthy elderly, and 8 young adults. Postural sway was recorded using an electromagnetic motion analysis system in four conditions (2 vision x 2 vibration) with four trials in each condition to test subjects' adaptation to the vibrator stimulus. The results showed that PD patients did adapt to the vibration across trials, similar to those of both control groups. It was concluded that PD patients in the early stages of the disease could override inaccurate proprioceptive inputs, relying more on true vestibular and/or visual information. These results suggest that the basal ganglia are not critical for this adaptation process in postural control. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.