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posted by on Tuesday January 24 2017, @03:31AM   Printer-friendly
from the fish-can-balance? dept.

Zebrafish learn to balance by darting forward when they feel wobbly, a principle that may also apply to humans, according to a study led by researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center.

The fish make good models to understand human balance because they use similar brain circuits, say the study authors. The researchers hope their work will one day help therapists to better treat balance problems that affect one in three aging Americans, and for whom falls are a leading cause of death.

Published online January 19 in Current Biology, the new study found that early improvements in a zebrafish's balance emerge from its growing ability to execute quick swims in response to the perception of instability. Over time young fish learn to make corrective movements when unstable and become better at remaining stable.

"By untangling the forces used by the fish while swimming, and during the pauses between these corrective movements, we may have uncovered a foundational balance mechanism -- the mental command to start moving when unstable," says lead study investigator David Schoppik, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Neuroscience and Physiology at NYU Langone.

Full paper: David E. Ehrlich, David Schoppik. Control of Movement Initiation Underlies the Development of Balance. Current Biology, 2017; DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2016.12.003


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by ledow on Tuesday January 24 2017, @03:40PM

    by ledow (5567) on Tuesday January 24 2017, @03:40PM (#458113) Homepage

    Proprioception (knowing where parts of you are in space) is an oft-missed part of human sense.

    If you blindfold someone and tell them to walk in a straight line, they will spiral back to a point. Every time. We don't have that kind of larger sense of where we are in the world.

    Certain conditions (e.g. hypermobility) cause people to now be able to know where their limbs are, so falls etc. are likely. They honestly fail road-side sobriety tests because they CAN'T touch their nose with their eyes closed (I know, I used to be married to someone with this).

    Balance is not about sensing levels (ears do that well but suffer from fluid-latency).
    It's not about seeing where you're going (blindfolded you don't fall over immediately).
    It's not about moving your limbs in certain ways (technically you barely move when standing still, but there are pressures and tensions in muscles to hold you there which don't cause movement on their own).
    It's not about speed or strength (even old ladies can balance just fine most of the time).
    It's not about sensing your body parts (most hypermobile people function fine in everyday life).
    It's not even about having all the necessary parts (people without toes find it incredibly hard to balance on their feet).

    It's a strange, complex interaction of them all where any one is not "necessary" but all are useful.

    The problem is that when you translate it to robots with stiff limbs, actuators for muscles, and remove all the subtleties, the only options left are to compensate by moving fast and detecting movement quickly (which ends up with erratic compensation).

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