Participants underwent a full functional motor and muscular-skeletal examination. We performed posturographic evaluation running three consecutive registering trials in four conditions. The first was standing on the footboard with eye open (NO - normal open, the ecologic stance condition). The second was standing on the footboard with eyes closed (NC - normal closed, the stance condition where postural control relies more on proprioceptive somatosensory input). The third was standing on pads with eyes open (PO - pad open, the stance condition where postural control relies more on visual information). The fourth was standing on pad with eyes closed (PC - pads closed - the stance condition where postural control relies more on vestibular afferent information). We used a footboard with piezoelectric crystals (Kristler 9286AA model). We applied a low-bandpass filter set at 10 Hz. Participants were standing still looking at a 3-m far fixating point. To quantify the postural performance from data obtained from the platform, we analyzed the surface (data not reported) and the variance of speed of the center of pressure (CoP). In a previous work, we had collected normative values for 4-13 years old children/adolescents.
Participants underwent also vestibular-evoked myogenic potentials (VEMPs), registering cervical responses. We registered cervical-evoked potentials (c-VEMPs) from the active electrode placed on the body of the sternocleidomastoid muscle, with reference places at the top of the sternum. We administered 50-ms long square tones of 100 dB amplitude at 0.5-Hz stimulation frequency. Filter bandpass lower and upper limits were 20 Hz and 20 kHz, respectively.