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Postural Control in Childhood: Investigating the Neurodevelopmental Gradient Hypothesis.

ABSTRACT: Neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) have been suggested to lie on a gradient continuum, all resulting from common brain disturbances, but with different degrees of impairment severity. This case-control study aimed to assess postural stability against such hypothesis in 104 children/adolescents aged 5-17, of whom 81 had NDDs and 23 were healthy controls. Compared to healthy controls, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) resulted in the most severely impaired neurodevelopmental condition, followed by Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and Tourette Syndrome (TS). In particular, while ASD children/adolescents performed worse than healthy controls in a number of sensory conditions across all parameters, ADHD children/adolescents performed worse than healthy controls only in the sway area for the most complex sensory conditions, when their vision and somatosensory functions were both compromised, and performance in Tourette Syndrome (TS) was roughly indistinguishable from that of healthy controls. Finally, differences were also observed between clinical groups, with ASD children/adolescents, and to a much lesser extent ADHD children/adolescents, performing worse than TS children/adolescents, especially when sensory systems were not operationally accurate. Evidence from this study indicates that poor postural control may be a useful biomarker for risk assessment during neurodevelopment, in line with predictions from the gradient hypothesis.

SUBMITTER: Zoccante L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7916459 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Postural Control in Childhood: Investigating the Neurodevelopmental Gradient Hypothesis.

Zoccante Leonardo L Ciceri Marco Luigi ML Chamitava Liliya L Di Gennaro Gianfranco G Cazzoletti Lucia L Zanolin Maria Elisabetta ME Darra Francesca F Colizzi Marco M

International journal of environmental research and public health 20210210 4

Neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) have been suggested to lie on a gradient continuum, all resulting from common brain disturbances, but with different degrees of impairment severity. This case-control study aimed to assess postural stability against such hypothesis in 104 children/adolescents aged 5-17, of whom 81 had NDDs and 23 were healthy controls. Compared to healthy controls, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) resulted in the most severely impaired neurodevelopmental condition, followed by A ...[more]

PMID: 33578752

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Project description:The rambling and trembling analysis separates the center of pressure (COP) fluctuations into two components: rambling (supraspinal contribution) and trembling (muscle stiffness / reflexive properties contribution). We examined whether the trembling component is correlated to the contractile properties (muscle stiffness and contraction time) of lower limb superficial skeletal muscles to experimentally test the rambling and trembling hypothesis. We hypothesized that muscle stiffness and contraction time, would be: (a) more correlated with; and (b) have a greater impact on the trembling component compared to the rambling component. Thirty-two healthy young adults were recruited for the study and tensiomyography was used to assess mechanical muscle responses to a single electrical stimulus to calculate muscle stiffness and contraction time based on radial muscle belly displacement measurements of lower limb muscles unilaterally. Moreover, upright postural control was assessed using a force plate to record ground reaction forces and moments and calculate the COP fluctuations during two 30 seconds trials. From the COP fluctuations, rambling and trembling time series were extracted, and all fluctuation time series were described using a number of different time-domain and frequency-domain parameters in both the anterior-posterior and medial-lateral directions. Our results demonstrated that both muscle stiffness and contraction time were moderately correlated with time-domain and frequency-domain parameters of the trembling component, as compared with those of the rambling component which was not as well correlated. Moreover, they also predicted the trembling component better. Overall, these results imply that postural control during quiet stance is, in part, related to intrinsic muscle stiffness in the lower extremities. Moreover, we showed that the rambling and trembling hypothesis is effective in separating postural sway fluctuations during upright posture to extract the contributions of muscle stiffness / reflexive properties (trembling), and likely the supraspinal contribution (rambling).

Project description:Background and aimsThe stress gradient hypothesis (SGH), the view that competition prevails in undisturbed and productive environments, and shifts to facilitation in disturbed or stressful environments, has become a central paradigm in ecology. However, an alternative view proposes that the relationship between biotic interactions and environmental severity should be unimodal instead of monotonic. Possible causes of discrepancies between these two views were examined in the high elevation desert of the arid Trans-Himalayas.MethodsA putative nurse species and its associated plant community was surveyed over its entire elevation range, spanning from alpine to desert vegetation belts. The results were analysed at the community level (vegetation cover and species richness), considering the distinction between the intensity and the importance of biotic interactions. Interactions at the species level (pairwise interactions) were also considered, i.e. the variation of biotic interactions within the niche of a species, for which the abundance (species cover) and probability of occurrence (presence/absence) for the most widespread species along the gradient were distinguished.Key resultsOverall, facilitation was infrequent in our study system; however, it was observed for the two most widespread species. At the community level, the intensity and importance of biotic interactions showed a unimodal pattern. The departure from the prediction of the SGH happened abruptly where the nurse species entered the desert vegetation belt at the lowest elevation. This abrupt shift was attributed to the turnover of species with contrasting tolerances. At the species level, however, facilitation increased consistently as the level of stress increases and individuals deviate from their optimum (increasing strain).ConclusionWhile the stress gradient hypothesis was not supported along our elevation gradient at the community level, the strain gradient hypothesis, considering how species perceive the ambient level of stress and deviate from their optimum, provided a parsimonious explanation for the outcome of plant-plant interactions at both scales.

Dataset Information

Postural Control in Childhood: Investigating the Neurodevelopmental Gradient Hypothesis.

Publications

Postural Control in Childhood: Investigating the Neurodevelopmental Gradient Hypothesis.

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