Abstract des Autors

Chaotic swaying was found in movement of the centre of the pressure under a subject's feet when standing still and when standing while swinging the upper limbs. Proof of this chaotic swaying was provided by reconstruction of the dynamics in phase space and calculation of the largest Lyapunov exponent. Movement variability constitutes a pattern of stimulation that provides task-relevant information about the dynamical interaction between an animal and its environment (Riccio, 1993). Mathematical techniques from information theory were applied to the analysis of the dynamical principle behind chaotic swaying. The results obtained by this novel approach suggest that chaotic swaying of the body is a dynamically stable state of the body while receiving information from many segments within the body and its external environment. Verf.-Referat