Recovering Whole-body Angular Momentum and Margin of Stability After Treadmill-induced Perturbations During Sloped Walking in Healthy Young Adults

Overview

Journal Sci Rep

Specialty Science

Date 2024 Feb 22

PMID 38388724

Authors

Shabnam Shokouhi

Prasanna Sritharan

Peter Vee-Sin Lee

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Although humans are well-adapted to negotiating sloped terrain, balance recovery after a disturbance on slopes is poorly understood. This study investigated how slope affects recovery from unanticipated simulated trips and slips. Eighteen healthy young adults walked on a split-belt treadmill at 1.25 m/s and three slope angles (downhill: - 8°; level: 0°; uphill: + 8°), with slip- and trip-like perturbations applied randomly at heel-strike. We evaluated balance recovery using whole-body angular momentum (WBAM) and perturbation response (PR), for which larger PR values indicate greater deviation of the margin of stability from baseline, therefore, greater destabilisation after perturbation. Overall, trips were more destabilising than slips, producing larger PR and greater range and integral of WBAM across all tested slopes, most significantly in the sagittal plane. Contrary to expectation, sagittal-plane PR post-trip was greatest for level walking and smallest for downhill walking. Heightened vigilance during downhill walking may explain this finding. Recovery strategy in both frontal and sagittal planes was consistent across all slopes and perturbation types, characterized by a wider and shorter first recovery step, with trips requiring the greatest step adjustment. Our findings advance understanding of the robustness of human locomotion and may offer insights into fall prevention interventions.

Citing Articles

Balance recovery schemes following mediolateral gyroscopic moment perturbations during walking.

Mohseni O, Mahmoudi A, Firouzi V, Seyfarth A, Vallery H, Sharbafi M PLoS One. 2024; 19(12):e0315414.

PMID: 39739770 PMC: 11687818. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0315414.

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