POSTURAL ENTRIES - OVERVIEW

To stand upright, the human body needs a postural system, managed by the nervous system. However, what exactly within the nervous system allows the body to maintain this balance and performance in a single-leg or two-legged stance? These are called postural inputs; here they are.

Postural inputs are numerous in the body, but some are paramount when it comes to postural work in a clinical setting. These include eye movements, cutaneous exteroception from the feet, proprioception from the ankle muscles, and vestibular information. The jaw, while not a direct input in itself, is a major disruptor of eye movements.

When standing, each postural input plays a very important role by sending information to the brain, allowing the latter to respond to each stimulus by sending commands to the muscles in order to maintain the straightness and balance of the body.

Here is an example:

Standing, you lean to the right. Within the first few milliseconds of the movement, your eye, through its oculomotor function, will signal to your brain that the vertical and horizontal reference points have changed. Your foot, through cutaneous exteroception, will indicate that there is now more pressure on the skin to the right. Since the muscles in your ankles are more stretched on your left, the muscle spindles responsible for proprioception will register this change. Finally, your vestibular system (one in each inner ear) will encode the rightward lateral movement of your head.

With all this new information reaching an area of your brain called the vestibular nuclei, you'll make the necessary adaptations to avoid falling to your right. The same process will repeat itself if you climb stairs, lift a foot, walk on uneven ground, and so on.

In upcoming articles, you will learn more specifically about each postural input. You will gain a better understanding of how each one functions, but above all, how they can be disrupted and thus lead to problems with postural control. It is at this point that the jaw comes into play, as well as the consequences associated with these postural disturbances.