Disorders of Posture and Gait

Abstract

The Xth International Symposium of the Society for Postural and Gait Research took place in Munich, September 2 through 6, 1990. The International Society for Posturography was founded in 1969 by basic scientists and clinicians who had a mutual interest in the recording and analysis of body sway in normal subjects, exceptional populations, and patients. It was at the meeting in Houston in 1983 that it was realized that the interest in posturography had broadened to cover the complex question of "postural control." In Amsterdam in 1986, it was decided that the Society should be rechristened "The International Society for Postural and Gait Research" to provide a challenging and stimulating program for the next decades rather than to confine the interest to a particular method. Posturography is still used, and many methods of analyzing sway have been developed, including displacement of the center of foot pressure, sway path, root mean square values, sway area, sway histograms, and power spectral analysis. New techniques are, however, now in common use, the most important being EMG and reflex swdie:. ir, dynamic posturography. Study of both head and trunk movements is performed, because postural balance can be simply described as the stability of an inverted multilinked pendulum. The use of electronic camera systems to measure complex body movements in three dimensions in freely moving subjects became popular. Thus, the interests of the Society which were presented by people from disciplines such as neurophysiology, engineering,