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Locomotion control during curb descent: Bilateral ground reaction variables covary consistently during the double support phase regardless of future foot placement constraints

During community ambulation, anticipatory adaptations in gait are key for navigating built, populated and natural environments. It has been argued that some instability in gait can be functionally beneficial in situations demanding high maneuverability, and while the mechanisms utilized to maintain...

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Autores principales: Cui, Chuyi, Kulkarni, Ashwini, Rietdyk, Shirley, Ambike, Satyajit
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9534401/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36197891
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268090
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author Cui, Chuyi
Kulkarni, Ashwini
Rietdyk, Shirley
Ambike, Satyajit
author_facet Cui, Chuyi
Kulkarni, Ashwini
Rietdyk, Shirley
Ambike, Satyajit
author_sort Cui, Chuyi
collection PubMed
description During community ambulation, anticipatory adaptations in gait are key for navigating built, populated and natural environments. It has been argued that some instability in gait can be functionally beneficial in situations demanding high maneuverability, and while the mechanisms utilized to maintain locomotor balance are well understood, relatively less is known about how the control of gait stability changes to facilitate upcoming maneuvers in challenging environments. The double support phase may be important in this regard; since both feet can push off the ground simultaneously, there is greater control authority over the body’s movement during this phase. Our goal was to identify how this control authority is exploited to prepare for upcoming maneuvers in challenging environments. We used synergy indices to quantify the degree of coordination between the ground reaction forces and moments under the two feet for stabilizing the resultant force and moment on the body during the double support phase of curb descent. In contrast to our expectations, we observed that the kinetic synergy indices during curb descent were minimally influenced by expected foot targeting maneuvers for the subsequent step. Only the resultant moment in the frontal plane showed reduced stability when targeting was required, but the synergy index was still high, indicating that the resultant moment was stable. Furthermore, the synergy indices indicated that the main function of the ground reaction variables is to maintain stability of whole-body rotations during double support, and this prerogative was minimally influenced by the subsequent foot targeting tasks, likely because the cost of losing balance while descending a curb would be higher than the cost of mis-stepping on a visual target. Our work demonstrates the salience of stabilizing body rotations during curb negotiation and improves our understanding of locomotor control in challenging environments.
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spelling pubmed-95344012022-10-06 Locomotion control during curb descent: Bilateral ground reaction variables covary consistently during the double support phase regardless of future foot placement constraints Cui, Chuyi Kulkarni, Ashwini Rietdyk, Shirley Ambike, Satyajit PLoS One Research Article During community ambulation, anticipatory adaptations in gait are key for navigating built, populated and natural environments. It has been argued that some instability in gait can be functionally beneficial in situations demanding high maneuverability, and while the mechanisms utilized to maintain locomotor balance are well understood, relatively less is known about how the control of gait stability changes to facilitate upcoming maneuvers in challenging environments. The double support phase may be important in this regard; since both feet can push off the ground simultaneously, there is greater control authority over the body’s movement during this phase. Our goal was to identify how this control authority is exploited to prepare for upcoming maneuvers in challenging environments. We used synergy indices to quantify the degree of coordination between the ground reaction forces and moments under the two feet for stabilizing the resultant force and moment on the body during the double support phase of curb descent. In contrast to our expectations, we observed that the kinetic synergy indices during curb descent were minimally influenced by expected foot targeting maneuvers for the subsequent step. Only the resultant moment in the frontal plane showed reduced stability when targeting was required, but the synergy index was still high, indicating that the resultant moment was stable. Furthermore, the synergy indices indicated that the main function of the ground reaction variables is to maintain stability of whole-body rotations during double support, and this prerogative was minimally influenced by the subsequent foot targeting tasks, likely because the cost of losing balance while descending a curb would be higher than the cost of mis-stepping on a visual target. Our work demonstrates the salience of stabilizing body rotations during curb negotiation and improves our understanding of locomotor control in challenging environments. Public Library of Science 2022-10-05 /pmc/articles/PMC9534401/ /pubmed/36197891 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268090 Text en © 2022 Cui 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
Cui, Chuyi
Kulkarni, Ashwini
Rietdyk, Shirley
Ambike, Satyajit
Locomotion control during curb descent: Bilateral ground reaction variables covary consistently during the double support phase regardless of future foot placement constraints
title Locomotion control during curb descent: Bilateral ground reaction variables covary consistently during the double support phase regardless of future foot placement constraints
title_full Locomotion control during curb descent: Bilateral ground reaction variables covary consistently during the double support phase regardless of future foot placement constraints
title_fullStr Locomotion control during curb descent: Bilateral ground reaction variables covary consistently during the double support phase regardless of future foot placement constraints
title_full_unstemmed Locomotion control during curb descent: Bilateral ground reaction variables covary consistently during the double support phase regardless of future foot placement constraints
title_short Locomotion control during curb descent: Bilateral ground reaction variables covary consistently during the double support phase regardless of future foot placement constraints
title_sort locomotion control during curb descent: bilateral ground reaction variables covary consistently during the double support phase regardless of future foot placement constraints
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9534401/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36197891
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0268090
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