Slipping while counting: gaze–gait interactions during perturbed walking under dual-task conditions

Walking is a complex task. To prevent falls and injuries, gait needs to constantly adjust to the environment. This requires information from various sensory systems; in turn, moving through the environment continuously changes available sensory information. Visual information is available from a distance, and therefore most critical when negotiating difficult terrain. To effectively sample visual information, humans adjust their gaze to the terrain or—in laboratory settings—when facing motor perturbations. During activities of daily living, however, only a fraction of sensory and cognitive resources can be devoted to ensuring safe gait. How do humans deal with challenging walking conditions when they face high cognitive load? Young, healthy participants (N = 24) walked on a treadmill through a virtual, but naturalistic environment. Occasionally, their gait was experimentally perturbed, inducing slipping. We varied cognitive load by asking participants in some blocks to count backward in steps of seven; orthogonally, we varied whether visual cues indicated upcoming perturbations. We replicated earlier findings on how humans adjust their gaze and their gait rapidly and flexibly on various time scales: eye and head movements responded in a partially compensatory pattern and visual cues mostly affected eye movements. Interestingly, the cognitive task affected mainly head orientation. During the cognitive task, we found no clear signs of a less stable gait or of a cautious gait mode, but evidence that participants adapted their gait less to the perturbations than without secondary task. In sum, cognitive load affects head orientation and impairs the ability to adjust to gait perturbations. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00221-023-06560-6.