Falls and mobility disorders are common, dangerous, and expensive conditions in older people.
Their causes are multifactorial, including impairments in vision, gait, balance, muscle strength, and cognition. Loss of peripheral somatosensory function, which is common in aging, diabetes, and other causes of peripheral neuropathy, is also a risk factor for falls.
There were no proven methods to improve somatosensory function in humans until recently when the physical principle of stochastic resonance (SR) was applied to the human somatosensory system. The principle asserts that the presence of a particular low level of white noise can be used to enhance the detection of a weak signal.
Although we usually think of noise as something that interferes with the transmission of information, experiments in various biological systems, including ion channels and sensory neurons, have demonstrated that low levels of white noise superimposed on a stimulus can actually improve its detection.
Therefore, we hypothesized that a noise-based device, such as a shoe insole, might be effective in enhancing somatosensory function in the feet and thereby enable those with reduced plantar sole sensation to overcome associated impairments in balance and gait.
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