scholarly journals Dynamics of corticospinal motor control during overground and treadmill walking in humans

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luisa Roeder ◽  
Tjeerd W Boonstra ◽  
Simon S Smith ◽  
Graham K Kerr

AbstractIncreasing evidence suggests cortical involvement in the control of human gait. However, the nature of corticospinal interactions remains poorly understood. We performed time-frequency analysis of electrophysiological activity acquired during treadmill and overground walking in 22 healthy, young adults. Participants walked at their preferred speed (4.2, SD 0.4 km h−1), which was matched across both gait conditions. Event-related power, corticomuscular coherence (CMC) and inter-trial coherence (ITC) were assessed for EEG from bilateral sensorimotor cortices and EMG from the bilateral tibialis anterior (TA) muscles. Cortical power, CMC and ITC at theta, alpha, beta and gamma frequencies (4-45 Hz) increased during the double support phase of the gait cycle for both overground and treadmill walking. High beta (21-30 Hz) CMC and ITC of EMG was significantly increased during overground compared to treadmill walking, as well as EEG power in theta band (4-7 Hz). The phase spectra revealed positive time lags at alpha, beta and gamma frequencies, indicating that the EEG response preceded the EMG response. The parallel increases in power, CMC and ITC during double support suggest evoked responses at spinal and cortical populations rather than a modulation of ongoing corticospinal oscillatory interactions. The evoked responses are not consistent with the idea of synchronization of ongoing corticospinal oscillations, but instead suggest coordinated cortical and spinal inputs during the double support phase. Frequency-band dependent differences in power, CMC and ITC between overground and treadmill walking suggest differing neural control for the two gait modalities, emphasizing the task-dependent nature of neural processes during human walking.New & NoteworthyWe investigated cortical and spinal activity during overground and treadmill walking in healthy adults. Parallel increases in power, CMC and ITC during double support suggest evoked responses at spinal and cortical populations rather than a modulation of ongoing corticospinal oscillatory interactions. These findings identify neurophysiological mechanisms that are important for understanding cortical control of human gait in health and disease.

2018 ◽  
Vol 120 (3) ◽  
pp. 1017-1031 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luisa Roeder ◽  
Tjeerd W. Boonstra ◽  
Simon S. Smith ◽  
Graham K. Kerr

Increasing evidence suggests cortical involvement in the control of human gait. However, the nature of corticospinal interactions remains poorly understood. We performed time-frequency analysis of electrophysiological activity acquired during treadmill and overground walking in 22 healthy, young adults. Participants walked at their preferred speed (4.2, SD 0.4 km/h), which was matched across both gait conditions. Event-related power, corticomuscular coherence (CMC), and intertrial coherence (ITC) were assessed for EEG from bilateral sensorimotor cortices and EMG from the bilateral tibialis anterior (TA) muscles. Cortical power, CMC, and ITC at theta, alpha, beta, and gamma frequencies (4–45 Hz) increased during the double support phase of the gait cycle for both overground and treadmill walking. High beta (21–30 Hz) CMC and ITC of EMG was significantly increased during overground compared with treadmill walking, as well as EEG power in theta band (4–7 Hz). The phase spectra revealed positive time lags at alpha, beta, and gamma frequencies, indicating that the EEG response preceded the EMG response. The parallel increases in power, CMC, and ITC during double support suggest evoked responses at spinal and cortical populations rather than a modulation of ongoing corticospinal oscillatory interactions. The evoked responses are not consistent with the idea of synchronization of ongoing corticospinal oscillations but instead suggest coordinated cortical and spinal inputs during the double support phase. Frequency-band dependent differences in power, CMC, and ITC between overground and treadmill walking suggest differing neural control for the two gait modalities, emphasizing the task-dependent nature of neural processes during human walking. NEW & NOTEWORTHY We investigated cortical and spinal activity during overground and treadmill walking in healthy adults. Parallel increases in power, corticomuscular coherence, and intertrial coherence during double support suggest evoked responses at spinal and cortical populations rather than a modulation of ongoing corticospinal oscillatory interactions. These findings identify neurophysiological mechanisms that are important for understanding cortical control of human gait in health and disease.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luisa Roeder ◽  
Tjeerd W Boonstra ◽  
Graham K Kerr

AbstractChanges in human gait that result from ageing or neurodegenerative diseases are multifactorial. Here we assess the effects of age and Parkinson’s disease (PD) on corticospinal control in electrophysiological activity recorded during treadmill and overground walking. Electroencephalography (EEG) from 10 electrodes and electromyography (EMG) from two leg muscles were acquired from 22 healthy young, 24 healthy older and 20 adults with PD. Event-related power, corticomuscular coherence (CMC) and inter-trial coherence were assessed for EEG from bilateral sensorimotor cortices and EMG from tibialis anterior muscles during the double support phase of the gait cycle. CMC and EMG power in the low beta band (13-21 Hz) was significantly decreased in older and PD participants compared to young people, but there was no difference between older and PD groups. Older and PD participants spent shorter time in the swing phase than young individuals. These findings indicate age-related changes in the temporal coordination of gait. The decrease in beta CMC suggests reduced cortical input to spinal motor neurons in older people during the double support phase. We also observed multiple changes in electrophysiological measures at high beta and low gamma frequencies during treadmill compared to overground walking, indicating task-dependent differences in corticospinal locomotor control.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liyu Cao ◽  
Xinyu Chen ◽  
Barbara F. Haendel

Experiments in animal models have shown that running increases neuronal activity in early visual areas in light as well as in darkness. This suggests that visual processing is influenced by locomotion independent of visual input. Combining mobile electroencephalography, motion- and eye-tracking, we investigated the influence of overground free walking on cortical alpha activity (~10 Hz) and eye movements in healthy humans. Alpha activity has been considered a valuable marker of inhibition of sensory processing and shown to negatively correlate with neuronal firing rates. We found that walking led to a decrease in alpha activity over occipital cortex compared to standing. This decrease was present during walking in darkness as well as during light. Importantly, eye movements could not explain the change in alpha activity. Nevertheless, we found that walking and eye related movements were linked. While the blink rate increased with increasing walking speed independent of light or darkness, saccade rate was only significantly linked to walking speed in the light. Pupil size, on the other hand, was larger during darkness than during light, but only showed a modulation by walking in darkness. Analyzing the effect of walking with respect to the stride cycle, we further found that blinks and saccades preferentially occurred during the double support phase of walking. Alpha power, as shown previously, was lower during the swing phase than during the double support phase. We however could exclude the possibility that the alpha modulation was introduced by a walking movement induced change in electrode impedance. Overall, our work indicates that the human visual system is influenced by the current locomotion state of the body. This influence affects eye movement pattern as well as neuronal activity in sensory areas and might form part of an implicit strategy to optimally extract sensory information during locomotion.


Author(s):  
Farsam Farzadpour ◽  
Mohammad Danesh ◽  
Seyed M TorkLarki

Gait generation plays a significant role in the quality of locomotion of legged robots. This paper presents the development of multi-phase dynamic equations and optimal trajectory generation for a seven-link planar-biped robot walking on the ground level with consideration of feet rotation in the double support phase. The main contribution of this paper is to increase the stability margin at the phase transition time for simultaneous feet rotation in double support phase by introducing a new style of feet rotation. First, the derivation of the dynamics equations, which is a challenging problem due to the existence of the holonomic constraints, is performed using the Lagrangian formulation. Then, an analytical solution to inverse kinematics is proposed to determine the angles of each joint. A multi-objective genetic algorithm-based optimization technique is proposed to obtain the key parameters in trajectory generation so that the zero moment point tracks a predefined stable trajectory and additionally minimizes the power consumption, which is subjected to actuators’ powers limitations. The effect of the hip height on the total power consumption is also investigated. The numerical simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.


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