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Foot placement relies on state estimation during visually guided walking.

Rodrigo S Maeda1, Shawn M O'Connor2, J Maxwell Donelan1

  • 1Department of Biomedical Physiology and Kinesiology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.

Journal of Neurophysiology
|October 21, 2016
PubMed
Summary

The nervous system uses state estimation to combine sensory feedback and internal predictions for accurate foot placement during walking. This process helps compensate for imperfect sensory information and unexpected disturbances, similar to reaching movements.

Keywords:
adaptationinternal modellocomotionuncertaintyvision

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Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Motor Control
  • Biomechanics

Background:

  • Accurate foot placement is crucial for stable and safe walking.
  • The nervous system must integrate sensory feedback with internal predictions to achieve this accuracy, especially amidst sensory noise and disturbances.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether the nervous system employs state estimation to combine sensory feedback and forward model predictions during walking.
  • To understand how the brain compensates for imperfect sensory information and unexpected perturbations in a visually guided walking task.

Main Methods:

  • Human subjects performed a visually guided walking task while wearing prism lenses that introduced trial-by-trial uncertainty to visual feedback.
  • A consistent prism shift was applied to induce adaptation in the visuomotor mapping, and variations in prism noise were used to probe the reweighting of sensory inputs.
  • Computational models were used to simulate the walking task and analyze the role of state estimation in compensating for noise.

Main Results:

  • Increased prism noise led to smaller initial foot placement errors but slower adaptation to a consistent prism shift.
  • These findings are consistent with a mathematical model of walking that utilizes state estimation to manage sensory uncertainty.
  • The results suggest that the nervous system actively reweights sensory inputs based on their reliability.

Conclusions:

  • State estimation is a key mechanism employed by the nervous system during walking to accurately place the foot.
  • This process involves beneficially combining sensory feedback with internal forward model predictions to estimate the body's state.
  • The findings suggest that state estimation is a general principle of human motor control, applicable to both discrete movements and continuous locomotion.