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To successfully traverse their environment, humans often perform maneuvers to achieve desired task goals while simultaneously maintaining balance. Humans accomplish these tasks primarily by modulating their foot placements. As humans are more unstable laterally, we must better understand how humans modulate lateral foot placement. We previously developed a theoretical framework and corresponding computational models to describe how humans regulate lateral stepping during straight-ahead continuous walking. We identified goal functions for step width and lateral body position that define the walking task and determine the set of all possible task solutions as Goal Equivalent Manifolds (GEMs). Here, we used this framework to determine if humans can regulate lateral stepping during non-steady-state lateral maneuvers by minimizing errors consistent with these goal functions. Twenty young healthy adults each performed four lateral lane-change maneuvers in a virtual reality environment. Extending our general lateral stepping regulation framework, we first re-examined the requirements of such transient walking tasks. Doing so yielded new theoretical predictions regarding how steps during any such maneuver should be regulated to minimize error costs, consistent with the goals required at each step and with how these costs are adapted at each step during the maneuver. Humans performed the experimental lateral maneuvers in a manner consistent with our theoretical predictions. Furthermore, their stepping behavior was well modeled by allowing the parameters of our previous lateral stepping models to adapt from step to step. To our knowledge, our results are the first to demonstrate humans might use evolving cost landscapes in real time to perform such an adaptive motor task and, furthermore, that such adaptation can occur quickly–over only one step. Thus, the predictive capabilities of our general stepping regulation framework extend to a much greater range of walking tasks beyond just normal, straight-ahead walking. Author summary: When we walk in the real world, we rarely walk continuously in a straight line. Indeed, we regularly have to perform other tasks like stepping aside to avoid an obstacle in our path (either fixed or moving, like another person coming towards us). While we have to be highly maneuverable to accomplish such tasks, we must also maintain balance to avoid falling while doing so. This is challenging because walking humans are inherently more unstable side-to-side. Sideways falls are particularly dangerous for older adults as they can lead to hip fractures. Here, we establish a theoretical basis for how people might accomplish such maneuvers. We show that humans execute a simple lateral lane-change maneuver consistent with our theoretical predictions. Importantly, our simulations show they can do so by adapting at each step the same step-to-step regulation strategies they use to walk straight ahead. Moreover, these same control processes also explain how humans trade-off side-to-side stability to gain the maneuverability they need to perform such lateral maneuvers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Falls to the side are associated with significant morbidity, including increased risk of hip and radius fracture. Although step width variability, as measured by standard deviation, has been hypothesized to be associated with falls to the side, there is little supporting evidence. The extent to which such a relationship could be reliably established, however, is dependent on the accuracy with which step width, and thus step width variability, is measured. It has been reported that 400 consecutive steps are required to accurately estimate step width of young adults during treadmill walking. The degree to which this requirement generalizes to other populations has not been determined. Here, a secondary analysis of step width time series data from 19 middle-age women during treadmill walking revealed that 400 steps were insufficient to accurately estimate step width or step width variability for the majority of the women sampled. Patterns observed in the data suggest the potential influence of confounding factors including acclimatization to the task and fatigue during the protocol. The results suggest that the minimum number of steps previously reported as necessary to accurately assess step width and step width variability of young adults during treadmill walking is not valid for middle-age women. Furthermore, the results point to the potential value of reproducing and/or extending the original experiment that established 400 consecutive steps as necessary to accurately estimate step kinematics among young adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neck muscles are preferentially activated in specific force directions, but the constraints that the central nervous system considers when programming these preferred directions of muscle activity are unknown. The current study used ultrasound shear wave elastography (SWE) to investigate whether the material properties of the sternocleidomastoid (SCM) muscles exhibit preferred directions similar to their preferred direction of muscle activity during an isometric task. Twenty-four healthy participants matched isometric forces in 16 axial directions. All force targets were scaled to 20% of a maximum voluntary contraction. Muscle activity was recorded with surface electromyography (EMG) from six muscles (the bilateral SCMs, upper trapezius, and splenius capitis muscles), and shear wave velocities (SWVs) were recorded with SWE from both SCM muscles. We observed statistically significant differences between the preferred directions of muscle activity and SWVs for both the left SCM (P = 0.002) and the right SCM (P < 0.001), with the SWE data exhibiting a more lateral preferred direction. Significant differences in the spatial focus (P < 0.001) were also observed, with the dispersion of SWV data covering a greater angular range than the EMG data during isometric tasks. The preferred directions of muscle activity and material properties for the SCM muscles were closer than previous comparisons of muscle activity and moment arms, suggesting muscle mechanics could play a more important role than anatomy in how the central nervous system spatially tunes muscle activation. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Our study used a novel combination of surface electromyography and ultrasound shear wave elastography to investigate the neuromuscular control of the neck. Our work highlights differences in how the activation and material properties of the sternocleidomastoid muscles are modulated as the central nervous system stabilizes the neck during isometric force production. These findings provide normative data for future studies to investigate pathologic changes to both the activation and material properties of the sternocleidomastoid muscles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]