Might Vestibular “Noise” Cause Subclinical Balance Impairment and Falls?

Falls are the leading causes of accidental injury in older adults and directly contribute to more than 600,000 deaths each year worldwide. Although the issue of falls is complex, balance dysfunction is one the principal contributors to the heightened incidence of falls in older adults. A nationally representative survey of older adults in the United States showed that an inability to stand on a foam pad with the eyes closed was associated with more than a six-fold increase in the odds of reporting “difficulty with falls.” As stability in the “eyes closed, on foam” condition is reliant upon intact vestibular cues, these data implicate age-related vestibular loss as a potential contributor to falls, yet, the specific causal mechanism explaining the link between age-related vestibular loss and imbalance/falls was not known. Here we review recent data showing that, vestibular perceptual thresholds, an assay of vestibular sensory noise, were found to, (1) account for nearly half of subclinical balance impairment in healthy older adults and (2) correlate with postural sway in healthy young adults. Based upon the identified links between balance dysfunction and vestibular noise in healthy adults, we posit the following causal chain: (a) increased “noise” in vestibular feedback - yielding a reduced signal-to-noise ratio in vestibular feedback-increases sway, (b) excessive sway leads to imbalance, and (c) imbalance contributes to falls. Identifying the “cause” of age-related balance dysfunction will inform the development of interventions tailored to prevent falls, and fall-related injuries, in the growing population of older adults.