Signatures of Parkinson's disease in complexity of low-frequency fluctuations of postural sway velocity

Posturography is routinely used to qualitatively assess one of the cardinal symptoms of Parkinson’s disease – postural instability. While most measures of balance control are derived from displacement of the center of pressure there is evidence that such control is more likely to be velocity-based. We performed static posturographic tests (eyes open and eyes closed) during quiet standing in narrow stance for n=30 patients with Parkinson’s disease (PDP) in the ON state and compared the results with those of n=30 age-matched senior controls (HSC) and n=60 young controls (HYC). We used differentiator filters to generate time series of low-frequency fluctuations of sway velocity and calculated their Lempel-Ziv complexity (LZC). With eyes closed, the mediolateral LZC of HSC 0.21 (0.02) was significantly higher than those of HYC 0.19 (0.02) and PDP 0.18 (002). Thus aging and PD have opposite effects on mediolateral LZC which strongly differentiates between HSC and PDP (92% sensitivity and 87% specificity).