Plantar tactile perturbations enhance transfer of split-belt locomotor adaptation
| Autor: | Mukul Mukherjee, Jacob J. Bloomberg, Jung Hung Chien, Nicholas Stergiou, Diderik Jan Eikema, Melissa M. Scott-Pandorf, Sara A. Myers |
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| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2015 |
| Předmět: |
Adult
Male medicine.medical_specialty Transfer Psychology Context (language use) Sensory system Walking Article Young Adult Physical medicine and rehabilitation medicine Humans Treadmill Gait Sensory stimulation therapy Proprioception General Neuroscience Biomechanics Adaptation Physiological Biomechanical Phenomena Touch Perception Physical therapy Female Motor learning Psychology human activities Psychomotor Performance |
| Popis: | Patterns of human locomotion are highly adaptive and flexible, and depend on the environmental context. Locomotor adaptation requires the use of multisensory information to perceive altered environmental dynamics and generate an appropriate movement pattern. In this study, we investigated the use of multisensory information during locomotor learning. Proprioceptive perturbations were induced by vibrating tactors, placed bilaterally over the plantar surfaces. Under these altered sensory conditions, participants were asked to perform a split-belt locomotor task representative of motor learning. Twenty healthy young participants were separated into two groups: no-tactors (NT) and tactors (TC). All participants performed an overground walking trial, followed by treadmill walking including 18 minutes of split-belt adaptation and an overground trial to determine transfer effects. Interlimb coordination was quantified by symmetry indices and analyzed using mixed repeated measures ANOVAs. Both groups adapted to the locomotor task, indicated by significant reductions in gait symmetry during the split-belt task. No significant group differences in spatiotemporal and kinetic parameters were observed on the treadmill. However, significant groups differences were observed overground. Step and swing time asymmetries learned on the split belt treadmill, were retained and decayed more slowly overground in the TC group whereas in NT, asymmetries were rapidly lost. These results suggest that tactile stimulation contributed to increased lower limb proprioceptive gain. High proprioceptive gain allows for more persistent overground after-effects, at the cost of reduced adaptability. Such persistence may be utilized in populations displaying pathologic asymmetric gait by retraining a more symmetric pattern. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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