The long-term goal of this research is to understand how humans continuously stabilize their bodies while walking. Balance is necessary to prevent falling, an issue relevant to the rehabilitation of individuals with vestibular and other sensory impairments, as well as elderly adults who suffer from decreased sensory function. Although a great deal is known about postural balance while standing, less is known about balance while walking, because translation of the body makes it more difficult to make measurements and apply perturbations. We will develop a new experimental device that will make it possible to manipulate balance during walking, so that the resulting human control responses can be measured. We will then use this device to study common gait adaptations such as to step length and step width, and their impact on stability. These adaptations will be studied in both young and elderly subjects.
The Specific Aims of this project are: 1. To design and fabricate an active device that can externally stabilize or de-stabilize the body during treadmill walking, for use in testing and assessing control of balance. This device will provide a means to experimentally manipulate the body's degree of stability, or apply small perturbations during walking. 2. To determine the relationship between the degree of body instability and characteristics of walking such as step length and width, step variability, and metabolic cost. We will test the hypothesis that these characteristics are interrelated due to the need to control balance by adjusting gait parameters and foot placement. 3. To perform a system identification of the human control system that stabilizes balance during walking. We will use the external stabilization/de-stabilization device to apply small noise-like perturbations to subjects walking on a treadmill, measure their associated control responses, and identify the systematic feedback responses that are used to maintain continuous stability during walking.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
Type
Exploratory/Developmental Grants (R21)
Project #
5R21DC006466-02
Application #
6844943
Study Section
Biobehavioral and Behavioral Processes 3 (BBBP)
Program Officer
Platt, Christopher
Project Start
2004-01-15
Project End
2006-12-31
Budget Start
2005-01-01
Budget End
2006-12-31
Support Year
2
Fiscal Year
2005
Total Cost
$176,665
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Michigan Ann Arbor
Department
Engineering (All Types)
Type
Schools of Engineering
DUNS #
073133571
City
Ann Arbor
State
MI
Country
United States
Zip Code
48109
Collins, Steven H; Kuo, Arthur D (2013) Two independent contributions to step variability during over-ground human walking. PLoS One 8:e73597
Rebula, John R; Ojeda, Lauro V; Adamczyk, Peter G et al. (2013) Measurement of foot placement and its variability with inertial sensors. Gait Posture 38:974-80
O'Connor, Shawn M; Xu, Henry Z; Kuo, Arthur D (2012) Energetic cost of walking with increased step variability. Gait Posture 36:102-7
Dean, Jesse C; Kuo, Arthur D (2011) Energetic costs of producing muscle work and force in a cyclical human bouncing task. J Appl Physiol 110:873-80
Kuo, Arthur D; Donelan, J Maxwell (2010) Dynamic principles of gait and their clinical implications. Phys Ther 90:157-74
Kuo, Arthur D; Donelan, J Maxwell (2009) Comment on ""Contributions of the individual ankle plantar flexors to support, forward progression and swing initiation during walking"" ((Neptune et al., 2001) and ""Muscle mechanical work requirements during normal walking: the energetic cost of raising J Biomech 42:1783-5; author reply 1786-9
Gordon, Keith E; Ferris, Daniel P; Kuo, Arthur D (2009) Metabolic and mechanical energy costs of reducing vertical center of mass movement during gait. Arch Phys Med Rehabil 90:136-44
O'Connor, Shawn M; Kuo, Arthur D (2009) Direction-dependent control of balance during walking and standing. J Neurophysiol 102:1411-9
Collins, Steven H; Adamczyk, Peter G; Kuo, Arthur D (2009) Dynamic arm swinging in human walking. Proc Biol Sci 276:3679-88
Vanderpool, Matthew T; Collins, Steven H; Kuo, Arthur D (2008) Ankle fixation need not increase the energetic cost of human walking. Gait Posture 28:427-33

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