Methods

There are many different ways of testing the human sense of balance . However, many of these require specialised apparatus or access to medical facilities, both of which are outside my current resources, especially given the current pandemic. Whilst more rudimentary, the Romberg test is an easy to carry out test, which requires no external apparatus to conduct. The basic Romberg test consists of having a patient stand with their feet together, arms by their sides, and eyes closed. As the Romberg test is usually administered to those with vestibular impairments, after conducting a small pre-experiment on an independent subject, I decided to use a sharpened Romberg test. This simply involves adjusting the position in which the subject must remain. To conduct a single Romberg test, a subject was instructed to place their arms on the opposite shoulders, place one foot in front of the other (both facing forwards, toe to toe), tilt their head back as far as they could, and close their eyes. I then timed how long the subject could stay in this position, with any movement of arms off the shoulders, eyes opening or feet moving counting as a lapse of position. The closing of the eyes not only made the test harder, but it also eliminated the visual aspect of the sense of balance, creating a greater reliance on the subject’s vestibular sense, the sense the belt was meant the approximate.

In order to see if the wearing of the SenseBorg belt over a weeklong period could contribute to a better sense of balance, I first conducted a series of sharpened Romberg tests on the subject, before they had had any interaction with the belt. I conducted a series of 30 sharpened Romberg tests in a row, allowing the subject to rest for a minute halfway through to eliminate muscular fatigue as a factor. Further, the subject was instructed to switch which foot they had placed forward halfway through, to combat muscular imbalances as a factor in the tests. The subject was also made to wear a turned off SenseBorg belt during these tests. The belt was turned off for the whole duration but was worn just in case the slight weight of the belt had an impact on the results. Shoes and socks were not worn, and the tests were carried out on a wooden floor.

After this initial testing, the subject wore the (turned on) SenseBorg belt for 7 days, 12 hours each day (on average). After this week, 30 more sharpened Romberg tests were conducted with the subject wearing the belt (turned on), and the same considerations listed above taken into account. The tests were also taken at the same time of day as the original tests, to attempt to eliminate to contribution of daily mental fatigue to the subject’s results. They were also taken with the same footwear and floor surface. The two sets of data were then compared to see whether the week spent wearing the belt had any affect.