Neuromuscular Control Modelling of Static and Dynamic Balance Maintenance

Human balance maintenance represents the eventual outcome of a complex integration of sensory information coming from visual, vestibular, and proprioceptive systems. A degraded steadiness and postural capabilities are common signs of a wide spectrum of motor and neurological disorders, including aging. Through the investigation of the upright stance, insights can be gained about the underlying regulatory mechanisms deployed by the central nervous system (CNS), highlighting the neural pathways affected by the disease and providing information regarding the residual capabilities of motor programming. Since the human stance is an inherently unstable system, many efforts have been devoted to the modeling of the regulatory activity of the CNS in controlling balance. Notions and techniques belonging to the control theory have been applied in order to unveil how the CNS manages sensory information and deploys motor commands. However, the definition of the most suited control architecture for modeling the complex interactions underlying the human balance regulation still remains an open research field.

The goal of the present Research Topic is to collect contributions focused on the investigation of balance maintenance and postural strategy through a mathematical modeling approach. We encourage submissions where the problem of how the CNS manages the afferent information provided by the sensory feedback is treated under a control system paradigm, also with a system identification approach based on the analysis of the time series resulting as the output of the regulatory system. The modeling of balance maintenance from a mechanical point of view is also welcome, e.g., with multi-link models, especially whether it is applied to postural tasks involving perturbation of stance to be counteracted. The eventual scope is therefore to present an up-to-date picture of the most relevant advances in the field of the neural system mathematical modeling, applied to an only deceptively straightforward task as the human bipedal stance. Proposed papers can deal with healthy as well as pathological populations, gaining knowledge about how different diseases impact the way the CNS manages information integration and motor commands, from the higher to the lower level.

Thus, topic editors will welcome any types of manuscripts - research article, brief research article, review, and mini-review- about, but not limited to the following themes:

• Mathematical modeling of upright stance in static and dynamic conditions

• Control theory applied to balance maintenance system

• Posture control system identification

• Advanced techniques for posturography data analysis

• Artificial intelligence for the description of posture dynamics

• Signal processing techniques for posture timeseries analysis

Keywords: Balance control, Balance modelling, Neural motor commands, Sensory integration, Postural dynamics

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.