| Description |
Background: Despite ample research examining human gait, much is still unknown about how humans navigate unpredictable terrain. Most research has analyzed strictly linear gait, which does not comprise all of the gait tasks in everyday ambulation. Instead, humans routinely employ complex gait movements, such as turning, which is kinematically asymmetrical. Methods: This study investigates gait recovery strategies after repeated underfoot perturbations in healthy young adults (n = 2). Participants completed walking conditions around a circle with either inversion or eversion perturbations to either the inner or outer limb, delivered by a mechanized shoe. Kinematic data were collected from a retroreflective marker-based motion capture system. Linear mixed models assessed the effects of the perturbed limb, the direction of the center of pressure shift due to the perturbation, and their interaction on the change in the gait measures of step length, step width, margin of stability, and step cadence after perturbation. Findings: Participants employed more anteroposterior gait recovery strategies than mediolateral recovery strategies during the first and second recovery steps postperturbation. Perturbations to the inner limb elicited greater modulations of gait measures than perturbations to the outer limb. Step length decreased more after eversion perturbations than after inversion perturbations. iii Interpretation: Turning gait is different than linear gait, and thus may require different recovery strategies after disturbances than during linear gait. Particularly, the inner limb appears to be more sensitive to perturbation than the outer limb, and eversion perturbations appear to be more destabilizing than inversion perturbations. |
