Open AccessDynamic stability and stepping strategies of young healthy adults walking on an oscillating treadmill
Author(s) -
Tanya Onushko,
Timothy F Boerger,
Jacob Van Dehy,
Brian D. Schmit
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
plos one
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.99
H-Index - 332
ISSN - 1932-6203
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pone.0212207
Subject(s) - balance (ability) , treadmill , gait , support surface , physical medicine and rehabilitation , rotation (mathematics) , coronal plane , control theory (sociology) , amplitude , stability (learning theory) , mathematics , translation (biology) , medicine , physical therapy , physics , computer science , control (management) , geometry , artificial intelligence , anatomy , biochemistry , quantum mechanics , machine learning , messenger rna , gene , radiology , chemistry
Understanding how people modify their stepping to maintain gait stability may provide information on fall risk and help to understand strategies used to reduce loss of balance. The purpose of this study was to identify the stepping strategies healthy young individuals select to maintain balance while walking on a destabilizing surface in various directions. A treadmill mounted on top of a 6 degree-of-freedom motion base was used to generate support surface oscillations in different degrees of freedom and amplitudes. Fifteen healthy young adults (21.3 ± 1.4 years) walked at self-selected speeds while continuous sinusoidal oscillations were imposed to the support surface in a one degree of freedom: rotation or translation in the mediolateral (ML) direction and rotation or translation in the anteroposterior (AP) direction, with each condition repeated at three different amplitudes. We compared step width, length, and frequency and the mean and variability of margin of stability (MoS) during each experimental walking condition with a control condition, in which the support surface was stationary. Subjects chose a common strategy of increasing step width ( p < 0.001) and decreasing step length ( p = 0.008) while increasing mediolateral MoS ( p < 0.001), particularly during oscillations that challenged frontal plane control, with rotations of the walking surface producing the greatest changes to stepping.