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Full-Text Articles in Medicine and Health Sciences
Using Asymmetry To Your Advantage: Learning To Acquire And Accept External Assistance During Prolonged Split-Belt Walking, Natalia Sánchez, Surabhi N. Simha, J. Maxwell Donelan, James M. Finley
Using Asymmetry To Your Advantage: Learning To Acquire And Accept External Assistance During Prolonged Split-Belt Walking, Natalia Sánchez, Surabhi N. Simha, J. Maxwell Donelan, James M. Finley
Physical Therapy Faculty Articles and Research
People can learn to exploit external assistance during walking to reduce energetic cost. For example, walking on a split-belt treadmill affords the opportunity for people to redistribute the mechanical work performed by the legs to gain assistance from the difference in belts’ speed and reduce energetic cost. Though we know what people should do to acquire this assistance, this strategy is not observed during typical adaptation studies. We hypothesized that extending the time allotted for adaptation would result in participants adopting asymmetric step lengths to increase the assistance they can acquire from the treadmill. Here, participants walked on a split-belt …