Postural Control and Fall Risk Across Populations: Mechanisms, Assessment, and Intervention

Falls are a major cause of injury, disability, and loss of independence, particularly among older adults and individuals with neurological, vestibular, or musculoskeletal conditions. Although falls are multifactorial, impaired postural control is an important contributor to fall risk. Postural control requires the central nervous system to integrate visual, vestibular, and somatosensory information and generate appropriate motor responses to maintain body orientation and stability. Impairments in sensory processing, neuromuscular function, cognitive-motor integration, or postural responses can compromise stability during standing and movement and reduce the ability to recover from balance disturbances.Research on postural control and falls has frequently focused on individual populations, including older adults, people with neurological or musculoskeletal conditions, athletes, and individuals exposed to physically demanding environments. Despite important differences between these groups, common mechanisms of postural instability and several methodological questions remain. In particular, further evidence is needed to determine which measures of postural control are reliable, valid, responsive, and clinically meaningful; whether they are prospectively associated with falls; and whether their measurement properties and predictive value are consistent across populations and settings.This Research Topic aims to bring together research examining the sensory, neural, biomechanical, and cognitive mechanisms of postural control and their relationship with fall risk across populations. Particular interest is given to studies investigating sensory integration and reweighting, anticipatory postural adjustments, reactive balance responses, compensatory stepping, gait stability, cognitive-motor interference, and recovery from perturbations. Studies examining postural responses to real-world or task-related challenges, such as slips, trips, obstacle negotiation, turning, fatigue, altered surfaces, or restricted sensory information, are also encouraged.Instrumented assessments using force platforms, wearable sensors, motion analysis, electromyography, and neurophysiological methods are particularly encouraged when linked to clinically meaningful outcomes or prospectively recorded falls. Studies developing or validating fall-risk prediction approaches, including statistical and data-driven models, are welcome, particularly when reporting discrimination, calibration, clinical utility, and external validation.Intervention studies are also welcome, including perturbation-based balance training, virtual reality and exergaming, biofeedback, sensory-based interventions, and dual-task training. Studies examining whether improvements in instrumented postural-control measures translate into clinically meaningful improvements in balance, mobility, or fall outcomes are particularly relevant.Methodological research addressing the reliability, validity, responsiveness, standardisation, reference values, measurement error, and clinical interpretation of postural-control measures is strongly encouraged. Cross-population comparisons and independent replication or external validation of assessment approaches are of particular interest, with the aim of identifying which mechanisms and measures are population-specific and which may generalise across clinical and non-clinical settings.We welcome Original Research, Clinical Trials, Systematic Reviews, Reviews, Brief Research Reports, Methods, and Perspective articles addressing topics including, but not limited to:· Mechanisms of postural control: sensory integration and reweighting, anticipatory postural adjustments, reactive balance responses, compensatory stepping, and cognitive-motor interactions.· Assessment of postural control and stability: static and dynamic balance, gait stability, turning, obstacle negotiation, compensatory stepping, and recovery from internal or external perturbations using clinical or instrumented approaches.· Instrumented and neurophysiological assessment: force platforms, wearable sensors, motion analysis, electromyography, and measures of neural activity related to postural control.· Postural control across populations: older adults; people with neurological, vestibular, or musculoskeletal conditions; and younger or athletic populations, as well as individuals exposed to occupational, sporting, or mass-gathering environments.· Fall-risk assessment and prediction: prospective associations between postural-control measures and falls, fall-related outcomes, multivariable prediction models, data-driven approaches, and external validation.· Interventions targeting postural control: perturbation-based balance training, dual-task training, biofeedback, virtual reality, exergaming, and other approaches designed to enhance postural stability or recovery from balance disturbances.· Measurement and methodological research: reliability, validity, responsiveness, measurement error, reference values, standardisation, and clinical interpretation of postural-control and fall-risk measures.· Cross-population research: comparison, replication, and validation of postural-control mechanisms, measures, interventions, and their associations with falls across different populations, tasks, and settings. Topic editors: Hammad Alhasan, Mansour Abdullah Alshehri, Tamer Shousha Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/86282/postural-control-and-fall-risk-across-populations-mechanisms-assessment-and-intervention