COMPUTERIZED POSTUROGRAPHY

Yes. CAPS testing is very safe. When your balance isn’t working well, there is always some risk of losing your balance during testing. That’s why our technicians stay close beside you and are ready to steady you if you start to lose your balance. The tests are designed to get gradually harder, and your technician will stop moving on to harder tests if it isn’t safe for you to continue.

Balance depends on your eyes, your inner ear, and feedback from your muscles and joints all working properly. If any of these sensors are damaged or break down over time, balance can suffer. Each of these sensors also depends on nerve pathways to carry its signals into the brain, and damage or breakdown of any of these pathways can also cause balance problems. These signals then need to be combined in several areas of the brain, including the brainstem and cerebellum, as well as the parietal and insular cortex.

Damage or breakdown in any of these brain areas can also affect balance. Ultimately, your brain uses its sense of where you are in space to activate stabilizing reflexes through the motor system. Damage or breakdown in these motor stabilization pathways, or in the higher brain systems that control them, can also lead to balance problems. That’s why balance can be affected in so many neurological conditions.

CAPS testing shows how the pressure under your feet shifts as you sway and try to hold still. It displays this as a graph, called an ellipse of sway, which shows us what strategies you are using to keep your balance. It also gives you a Stability Score, based on normal values for people your age, which places your stability on a range from healthy balance to severely reduced.

Our series of tests shows us how well you can use feedback from your ankles, your eyes and your inner ear. Testing different combinations of these senses shows us not only how well each system works, but how well they work together. It helps reveal where your senses aren’t matching up, and when your systems start to tire or struggle. This helps guide how we work to get the different parts of your balance system working better, and working well together.

In many cases, yes. While no one can guarantee results, even complicated balance problems can often improve with the right kind of rehabilitation.

Balance therapy is a well-established approach that often uses progressively harder balance challenges to help your brain adapt and make better use of your visual, vestibular and body position systems. Our approach adds a different emphasis. We first use our computerized testing to help identify the specific visual, inner ear and body position reflexes that may be contributing to your balance problems. We start by working on those reflexes directly, then help them work together. We then add balance exercises, at a pace your nervous system can handle. Results vary from person to person, and our care can work alongside your physical therapist and other providers.