Editorial, Letter to the Editor and Commentaries on the Nintendo Wii Balance Board

摘要

Since its introduction in 2007, the Nintendo Wii balance board? has captured the attention of both end users and researchers. I personally know of few postural laboratories that have not acquired at least one unit to examine the possibilities that the Wii board offers. Others have gone much further and have adopted the Wii board as a tool of the trade to study balance control. As a result, the numbers of published manuscripts in Gait and Posture and other journals quoting the Wii board as a piece of equipment to study balance control has increased steadily since 2007. How should we consider the use of the Wii board? In my own laboratory, my colleagues and I resisted using the Wii board. One reason is remembrance of an old reading about electromyog-raphy [1 ]. In this enlightening book, Loeb and Gans [1 ] warned the reader about the pernicious effects of new technologies. They were not trying to start a movement against technology and modernism! They merely were concerned that as technology developed, there was a danger that the new generation of users (and students) would miss the opportunity to understand the basic underlying principles upon which science develops. To paraphrase Loeb and Gans [1], minimal knowledge about calibration requirements, signal conditioning and the digitizing process are not solely a burden slowing down our research. These processes allow appreciation of the quality and integrity of the data on a first-hand basis and may provide an opportunity to detect and correct failings. Despite all benefits the Wii board (and other "plug and play" technological devices) could bring to a laboratory, I would like to suggest that Loeb and Gans' words about new technologies are still "words of wisdom"!