Dr. Seuss meets Bernstein: uncovering principles of locomotor control through the study of hopping
Young-Hui Chang, Ph.D.
School of Applied Physiology
Georgia Tech
Host: Richard Nichols
Time: noon-1pm Wednesday, September 23
Location: Student Center, room 320
Abstract:
Nearly all diseases affecting the neuromusculoskeletal system have the potential to result in some form of gait deformity. These gait deficits can negatively impact the ability to walk efficiently and in a stable manner, which can have important consequences on an individual’s independence and quality of life. Understanding basic tenets that govern the compensatory control of the limbs before and after injury can provide a general framework for generating therapeutic interventions for pathological gait disabilities and give insight into the fundamental principles of locomotor control. Independent studies from within the fields of biomechanics and the neurosciences propose surprisingly similar ideas about the simplification of the neural control of legged locomotion across many diverse taxonomic groups of animals. This simplified control scheme likely occurs through a considerable hierarchical reduction in the complexity of locomotor control parameters that is attended to at higher levels of the nervous system. Yet, relatively little is known about how the functional redundancy resulting from this control structure is used during locomotion. We suggest that the neuromechanical redundancy in the legs is exploited in normal and pathological gaits to compensate for small as well as large gait deficits that occur on both acute and chronic time scales. This may represent a fundamental template for how the mammalian neuromechanical system hierarchically organizes and adapts the control of the limbs during locomotion.