People adapt a consistent center-of-mass trajectory in a novel force field

During human walking the whole body center-of-mass (COM) trajectory may be a control objective, a goal the central nervous system uses to plan and regulate movement. Our previous observation, that after practice walking in a novel laterally directed force field people adapt a COM trajectory similar to their normal trajectory, supports this idea. However, our prior work only presented data demonstrating changes in COM trajectory in response to a single force field. To evaluate whether this phenomena is robust, in the present study we present new data demonstrating that people adapt their COM trajectory in a similar manner when the direction of the external force field is changed resulting in drastically different lower limb joint dynamics. Specifically, we applied a continuous, left-directed force field (in the previous experiment the force field was applied to the right) to the COM as participants performed repeated trials of a discrete walking task. We again hypothesized that with practice walking in the force field people would adapt a COM trajectory that was similar to their baseline performance and exhibit aftereffects, deviation of their COM trajectory in the opposite direction of force field, when the field was unexpectedly removed. These hypotheses were supported and suggest that participants formed an internal model to control their COM trajectory. Collectively these findings demonstrate that people adapt their gait patterns to anticipate consistent aspects of the external environment. These findings suggest that this response is robust to force fields applied in multiple directions that may require substantially different neural control.NEW & NOTEWORTHY With experience people adapted a predictive internal model to control their whole body center-of-mass walking trajectory that anticipated the disruptive laterally directed forces of a novel and consistent external environment. Collectively these findings demonstrate that adaptation of gait to anticipate consistent aspects of the external environment is a response that is robust to force fields in multiple directions that require substantially different lower limb dynamics and neural control.