Pacing to pink noise enhances gait recovery from a mechanical perturbation

Effective locomotion requires physiological systems to adapt to instabilities. While gait perturbation recovery often appears rapid, it is possible that longer-lasting effects may be present. Therefore, this study explored recovery trends of gait dynamics following an experimenter-induced perturbation. Further investigation pertained to how responses to perturbations are influenced by walking to differently correlated auditory pacing cues (white noise, pink noise, isochronous, no cues) that altered stride-to-stride variability. The recovery rate of the temporal gait dynamics was measured 20 min post-perturbation using an interrupted time series analysis, a statistical method that evaluates the impact of an intervention by comparing trends in the data before and after the intervention is introduced. Pink noise gait, though seemingly affected by the perturbation initially, exhibited the fastest recovery to pre-perturbation gait dynamics. Conversely, white noise gait, despite appearing less affected at first, failed to completely recover, indicating a lasting perturbation effect. Isochronous gait remained unresponsive - an inflexibility that hinders adaptability to varying situations. The proposed statistical method reveals pre- and post-perturbation differences in gait dynamics and recovery rates, highlighting that pink noise gait offers faster adaptability to unexpected perturbations without long-term changes in gait dynamics.