01/29/2026
Long but worth the read…
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Your Neck, Your Balance, and What a New Study Reveals About Your Nervous System
Walking, standing, and turning your head feel effortless, but they are the result of a constant, silent conversation between your brain and your body. This incredible coordination is the foundation of every move we make, managed by the nervous system. When the communication between the brain and the body is clear, this system works seamlessly. But what happens when it isn't?
This question led researchers from Sherman College of Chiropractic to investigate a central puzzle about how our bodies work. They wanted to solve a two-part mystery about the connection between our neck, our balance, and our overall neurological health:
• Question 1: Do two common tests—one that measures our awareness of our neck's position and another that measures our ability to stand still—actually assess the same aspect of nervous system function?
• Question 2: Is feeling pain a reliable sign that your nervous system isn't working as well as it could be?
This report will break down what these researchers did, what their surprising findings revealed, and why their answers matter for understanding our health. We'll start by looking at how the team put this brain-body communication to the test.
1. Putting Brain-Body Communication to the Test
To get objective data about how the nervous system functions, the researchers used two well-established tests that measure different aspects of sensorimotor control—the process of taking in sensory information to produce a specific, controlled movement.
1.1 The Two Key Tests Explained
The study focused on two key concepts, each with its own specific assessment.
• Neck Awareness (Cervical Proprioception): This is your body's innate ability to know where your head and neck are in space without having to look in a mirror. It’s a critical sense for maintaining posture, coordination, and balance. When this sense becomes distorted, the brain receives unclear information, which can result in stiffness, awkward movement, or subtle balance changes.
• Standing Still (Static Body Sway): Even when you think you're standing perfectly still, your body is making constant, tiny, invisible movements to keep you from falling over. This is called static body sway. Measuring this sway provides a window into how well the brain integrates sensory information from the body; increased sway may indicate that the nervous system is working harder to maintain posture.
The research team assessed 55 chiropractic college students to assesses how well a person can sense their head and neck position without using their eyes.
Blindfolded participants wore a headlamp with a laser pointer. They first established their "neutral" head position, which was marked on a wall. Then, they turned their head fully left and right, attempting to return to the neutral spot each time. Researchers measured the error in millimeters.
The Balance Test
Measures the tiny, involuntary body movements (sway) a person makes while trying to stand perfectly still.
Participants stood on two special force plates for 90 seconds with their eyes closed. A computer connected to the plates measured their side-to-side and front-to-back body sway, calculating the total distance their center of pressure moved.
By comparing the results of these two distinct tests, the researchers hoped to find out if they were related and how a person's perceived pain influenced their performance. The answers they found were not what many would expect.
2. The Surprising Results: What the Study Found
The data revealed two major insights that challenge common assumptions about pain and physical function.
2.1 Finding #1: Pain Isn't the Whole Story
The study's first major finding was that a person's self-reported mild or moderate pain level did not significantly affect their performance on these functional tests. This suggests that the presence of pain isn't a reliable yardstick for measuring how well the nervous system is coordinating movement and balance. This finding led researcher Dr. McCoy to state that: pain cannot be relied upon as a primary indicator of function.
The numbers from the neck awareness test clearly illustrate this point:
• Neck Pain: Participants with neck pain had an average head repositioning error of 83mm. Participants without neck pain had an average error of 76mm. The study found this difference was not statistically significant.
• Low Back Pain: Participants with low back pain had an average error of 86mm, while those without it had an average error of 76mm. Again, this difference was not considered statistically significant.
The Key Insight: This finding suggests that how you feel (your subjective pain) and how your nervous system functions (your objective performance) are two different things. It's possible for underlying functional problems in coordination and balance to exist even when pain levels are low or absent entirely.
2.2 Finding #2: Two Tests, Two Different Stories
The second key result was that the neck awareness test and the balance test did not produce related findings. In simple terms, performing well on the neck test didn't predict that a person would perform well on the balance test, and vice versa.
This lack of correlation led the researchers to conclude that the two tests measure different and distinct aspects of nervous system function. The study recommends they should be considered "independent tools, rather than interchangeable measures." While one test (neck awareness) seems to evaluate the brain's ability to use an internal map for pre-planned movements, the other (balance) assesses the body's reflexive, automatic ability to react to tiny errors in real-time.
What This Means for Health Assessment: For clinicians, this is a crucial insight. To get a full and accurate picture of a person's neurological health, relying on a single test isn't enough. A practitioner may need to use multiple types of assessments because each one tells a unique part of the story about how the nervous system is working.
These specific findings have broader implications for how we should think about our own health and well-being.
3. Why This Research Matters for Your Everyday Life
Understanding the connection between your spine, your balance, and your nervous system is important because this intricate system is the foundation for everything your body does. The researchers, coming from a chiropractic college, are particularly interested in how spinal function impacts the nervous system. Their work is often framed around the concept of "vertebral subluxation," which can be understood simply as "structural shifts in the spine can occur that obstruct the nerves and interfere with their function." This provides the crucial context for why a study on neck awareness and balance is so relevant from this health perspective.
This study offers several key takeaways that can change how we think about health.
1. Don't Judge Your Health by Pain Alone This research strongly supports the idea that the absence of pain does not automatically equal optimal health. Subtle disruptions in nervous system communication can affect your balance and coordination long before any symptoms like pain or stiffness appear. Function can be compromised even when you feel fine.
2. Your Neck is a Critical Hub for Neurological Control While the two tests in the study measured different neurological functions, they both highlight the critical role of the neck in how the nervous system controls the body. The neck is a hub of sensory information, and its proper function is essential for the brain to maintain posture, balance, and coordination throughout the rest of the body.
3. Objective Measurement is Key The study underscores the value of functional tests that provide objective data. Relying only on subjective symptoms like pain can give an incomplete or even misleading picture of a person's health. Objective tests, like those for body sway and neck awareness, can reveal underlying issues that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Ultimately, this research reinforces a fundamental principle: clear and uninterrupted communication between the brain and the body is the foundation of health and well-being.
https://vertebralsubluxationresearch.com/2025/12/06/1874-correlation-of-cervical-proprioception-and-static-body-sway-in-assessing-sensorimotor-integration/
