ORCID

0000-0002-3682-0057

Keywords

Biomechanics, Metabolic Cost, Entrainment, Gait, Perturbations

Abstract

Entrainment is a natural phenomenon that occurs with synchronization to a rhythmic stimulus which can be auditory, visual, or mechanical. An everyday example is walking next to someone and synchronizing your steps. Previous studies have explored entrainment from auditory cues, such as a metronome, and mechanical cues, such as an exoskeleton applying a force at the ankle. These studies have found entrainment is more likely to occur if the stimulation frequency is close to the person’s natural locomotion frequency. Previously we found when discrete mediolateral perturbations were applied on a treadmill, participants increased their speed and retained this increased speed even when perturbations were removed. To our knowledge, treadmill perturbations have not been used as a mechanical stimulus to capture entrainment. We sought to investigate the application of these balance disruptions at fixed timings surrounding the participants’ preferred stride time to explore entrainment. We hypothesized that young adults would entrain to the surface perturbations applied at their preferred stride time. Additionally, we hypothesized participants would increase their walking speed with perturbations, similar to our last study. Eight young adults walked on a self-paced treadmill while we applied perturbations at percentages surrounding their preferred stride time (80%, 90%, 100%, 110%, and 120%). We analyzed walking speed, step kinematics, and entrainment from motion capture and treadmill data, along with net metabolic power and cost of transport from metabolic cost data. Three out of the six participants analyzed entrained to the preferred condition. Step width variability was the only step kinematic variable that showed significance between conditions. These results add insight about entrainment to balance disruptions during gait.

Completion Date

2024

Semester

Fall

Committee Chair

Huang, Helen

Degree

Master of Science (M.S.)

College

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Department

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Degree Program

Biomedical Engineering

Format

PDF

Identifier

DP0029006

Language

English

Release Date

12-15-2024

Access Status

Thesis

Campus Location

Orlando (Main) Campus

Accessibility Status

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