A study published in Experimental Brain Research looked at the neck’s influence on brain’s balance and knowing where we are in space. Researchers found that neck movement had a major impact on our brain’s ability to maintain these systems (the vestibular system).
This is very important for people with losses of neck motion, neck pain, neck stiffness, balance problems, vertigo, and those that wish to improve their performance.
The brain uses a sense called proprioception (information from muscles, tendons, and joints in our body) and the vestibular system (information about where our head is in space) to maintain balance and posture, as well as so many other critically important body functions ranging from eye movements to blood flow, muscle contractions, organ function, and more.
Our balance generally worsens as we get older and we know that losses of vestibular functions are a part of that problem.
The question is why?
Vestibular function is driven by information that comes from our body’s muscles, tendons, joints, and inner ears. In fact this information is the primary driver of brain function.
This makes sense.
We need to know where we are and be able to adapt to movements maintaining balance or we are not going anywhere.
Movement is a very high priority for humans and all animals.
This is why so much brain real estate is dedicated to it.
It’s also interesting in the sense that our brain requires activation in order to function. Activation is essential. Activation comes from various receptors located through out our bodies, what we often think of as senses.
The greatest amount of information by a massive margin is that coming from our bodies position in space with the greatest amount being from muscle receptors called spindles.
These little muscle receptors drive a very large amount of brain activity.
If you think about it, it’s amazing that we’re wired that way. It takes advantage of the only constant source of environmental energy, gravity. Light, sound, etc all can go away. On earth, gravity does not.
Thinking about movement a little further though… if we move, we need to change so many different things like blood flow increasing it to muscles we’re using, blood pressure, heart rate, and other organ function.
If we have a breakdown in this input into the brain, it could reasonably be expected to have some impact on these other factors as well just based on what we know about anatomy.
These senses are unconscious senses, knowing where we are in space BUT they are there.
Right now if you think about it, you should be able to tell where your legs are, is your head turned, are you looking down, and more with your eyes closed.
Certain parts of our body have greater amounts of little receptors in them to drive brain activity, essentially feeding your brain.
We have a lot of receptors in our hands which kind of makes sense, about 16 muscle spindle receptors per gram of muscle in our fingers and this really gives us a lot of information. It’s critically important because of how coordinated our hands must be to do our daily tasks.
This will blow your mind though.
In our deep neck muscles, we have about 242 muscle spindle receptors per gram of muscle. This is MORE than 15X the number of receptors in the fingers!
This really tells us how important our neck function is to our brain function.
This is a massive amount of information from the neck going up to the brain to drive it’s function.
This is one of the important reasons that chiropractors look closely at how the neck is moving and the tone of the muscles, as well as, how this is impacting our nervous system.
We can also use this input to change the function of certain problems, a good example using the basic information above is to use some type of neck treatment to change a person’s abnormal perception of movement like in cases of vertigo for example.
We can also test balance with different types of examination tests in the office while looking at other things to determine how well you are functioning, then do a type of adjustment, movement, stretch, or therapy to the neck then re-test the balance test and see a big improvement.
This is important for everyone… child, man, or woman that is having vertigo, coordination or balance issues… BUT it’s also important for so many things, maybe helping an athlete better know where they are in space so they can perform at a higher level OR an older person who is having trouble keeping their balance which is a huge risk factor for falls and injuries ranging from concussions to breaking bones and even death.
Of course, sometimes we can do other treatments to change different things that would be appropriate for different people and see similar changes.
We see really positive changes every day in our Texarkana Chiropractic office using this type of approach to helping people.
Want to See Dr. Hagebusch in Texarkana Chiropractic Clinic?
Give us a call and we’ll get it set up for you.
Reference: Experimental Brain Research 2002, “Neck proprioception compensates for age related deterioration of vestibular self motion perception” by G Schweigart, RD Chien, and T. Mergner looked at the neck’s influence on brain’s balance and knowing where we are in space.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00221-002-1218-2
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