{"doi":"10.1371/journal.pone.0317955","title":"Real sounds influence postural stability in people with vestibular loss but not in healthy controls","abstract":"OBJECTIVE: What we hear may influence postural control, particularly in people with vestibular hypofunction. Would hearing a moving subway destabilize people similarly to seeing the train move? We investigated how people with unilateral vestibular hypofunction and healthy controls incorporated broadband and real-recorded sounds with visual load for balance in an immersive contextual scene. DESIGN: Participants stood on foam placed on a force-platform, wore the HTC Vive headset, and observed an immersive subway environment. Each 60-second condition repeated twice: static or dynamic visual with no sound or static white noise or real recorded subway station sounds [real] played from headphones. SETTING: Human motion laboratory. PARTICIPANTS: 41 healthy controls (mean age 52 years, range 22-78) and 28 participants with unilateral peripheral vestibular hypofunction (mean age 61.5, 27-82). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: We collected center-of-pressure (COP, anterior-posterior, medio-lateral) from the force-platform and head (anterior-posterior, medio-lateral, pitch, yaw, roll) from the headset and quantified root mean square velocity (cm/s or rad/s). RESULTS: Adjusting for age, the vestibular group showed significantly more sway than controls on: COP medio-lateral (no sound or real with static or dynamic visual); COP anterior-posterior (only on dynamic visuals in the presence of either sound); head medio-lateral and anterior-posterior (all conditions), head pitch and yaw (only on dynamic visuals in the presence of either sound). A significant increase in sway with sounds was observed for the vestibular group only on dynamic visuals COP anterior-posterior and head yaw (real) and head anterior-posterior and pitch (either sound). CONCLUSIONS: The addition of auditory stimuli, particularly contextually-accurate sounds, to a challenging, standing balance task in real-life simulation increased sway in people with vestibular hypofunction but not in healthy controls. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Clinical trial registrationThis study was registered on clinicaltrials.gov at the following link: https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT04479761.","journal":"PLoS ONE","year":2025,"id":531858,"datarank":0.22253509862685694,"base_score":1.3862943611198906,"endowment":1.3862943611198906,"self_citation_contribution":0.20794415416798362,"citation_network_contribution":0.01459094445887333,"self_endowment_contribution":0.20794415416798362,"citer_contribution":0.01459094445887333,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":3,"citer_count":3,"citers_with_citation_signal":1,"citers_with_endowment":1,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9565,"is_data_producer":true,"deposit_databanks":{"ClinicalTrials.gov":["NCT04479761"]},"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":766885,"name":"Maura K. Cosetti","orcid":"0000-0003-1005-4136","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":5047,"name":"Daphna Harel","orcid":"0000-0001-7015-5989","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1274357,"name":"Marlee Sherrod","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":282096,"name":"Zhu Wang","orcid":"0000-0002-0773-0052","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1076314,"name":"Agnieszka Rogińska","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":766883,"name":"Jennifer Kelly","orcid":"0000-0003-0907-5351","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":766882,"name":"Anat V. Lubetzky","orcid":"0000-0001-5869-025X","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":39,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:51:18.928280Z","pmid":"39854326","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}