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Similar sensorimotor transformations control balance during standing and walking

Standing and walking balance control in humans relies on the transformation of sensory information to motor commands that drive muscles. Here, we evaluated whether sensorimotor transformations underlying walking balance control can be described by task-level center of mass kinematics feedback simila...

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Autores principales: Afschrift, Maarten, De Groote, Friedl, Jonkers, Ilse
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8266079/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34170903
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008369
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author Afschrift, Maarten
De Groote, Friedl
Jonkers, Ilse
author_facet Afschrift, Maarten
De Groote, Friedl
Jonkers, Ilse
author_sort Afschrift, Maarten
collection PubMed
description Standing and walking balance control in humans relies on the transformation of sensory information to motor commands that drive muscles. Here, we evaluated whether sensorimotor transformations underlying walking balance control can be described by task-level center of mass kinematics feedback similar to standing balance control. We found that delayed linear feedback of center of mass position and velocity, but not delayed linear feedback from ankle angles and angular velocities, can explain reactive ankle muscle activity and joint moments in response to perturbations of walking across protocols (discrete and continuous platform translations and discrete pelvis pushes). Feedback gains were modulated during the gait cycle and decreased with walking speed. Our results thus suggest that similar task-level variables, i.e. center of mass position and velocity, are controlled across standing and walking but that feedback gains are modulated during gait to accommodate changes in body configuration during the gait cycle and in stability with walking speed. These findings have important implications for modelling the neuromechanics of human balance control and for biomimetic control of wearable robotic devices. The feedback mechanisms we identified can be used to extend the current neuromechanical models that lack balance control mechanisms for the ankle joint. When using these models in the control of wearable robotic devices, we believe that this will facilitate shared control of balance between the user and the robotic device.
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spelling pubmed-82660792021-07-19 Similar sensorimotor transformations control balance during standing and walking Afschrift, Maarten De Groote, Friedl Jonkers, Ilse PLoS Comput Biol Research Article Standing and walking balance control in humans relies on the transformation of sensory information to motor commands that drive muscles. Here, we evaluated whether sensorimotor transformations underlying walking balance control can be described by task-level center of mass kinematics feedback similar to standing balance control. We found that delayed linear feedback of center of mass position and velocity, but not delayed linear feedback from ankle angles and angular velocities, can explain reactive ankle muscle activity and joint moments in response to perturbations of walking across protocols (discrete and continuous platform translations and discrete pelvis pushes). Feedback gains were modulated during the gait cycle and decreased with walking speed. Our results thus suggest that similar task-level variables, i.e. center of mass position and velocity, are controlled across standing and walking but that feedback gains are modulated during gait to accommodate changes in body configuration during the gait cycle and in stability with walking speed. These findings have important implications for modelling the neuromechanics of human balance control and for biomimetic control of wearable robotic devices. The feedback mechanisms we identified can be used to extend the current neuromechanical models that lack balance control mechanisms for the ankle joint. When using these models in the control of wearable robotic devices, we believe that this will facilitate shared control of balance between the user and the robotic device. Public Library of Science 2021-06-25 /pmc/articles/PMC8266079/ /pubmed/34170903 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008369 Text en © 2021 Afschrift et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Afschrift, Maarten
De Groote, Friedl
Jonkers, Ilse
Similar sensorimotor transformations control balance during standing and walking
title Similar sensorimotor transformations control balance during standing and walking
title_full Similar sensorimotor transformations control balance during standing and walking
title_fullStr Similar sensorimotor transformations control balance during standing and walking
title_full_unstemmed Similar sensorimotor transformations control balance during standing and walking
title_short Similar sensorimotor transformations control balance during standing and walking
title_sort similar sensorimotor transformations control balance during standing and walking
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8266079/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34170903
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008369
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