Walking in a width-changing virtual corridor affects step width variability

Mediolateral visual perturbations during treadmill walking affect gait variability in the frontal plane, but this effect had previously been shown only for randomly or discretely changing visual perturbations. This study investigated whether continuous changes in the width of a virtual corridor could affect step width variability during treadmill walking. Nine healthy adults performed three 6-minute treadmill walking conditions — a fixed-width control corridor and two corridors whose width expanded and narrowed sinusoidally (a Narrow and a Wide condition) — while kinematics were recorded. Step width variability was quantified using the standard deviation and the fractal scaling exponent (detrended fluctuation analysis). The standard deviation of step width was significantly greater in the Wide condition than the Narrow condition, while the fractal scaling exponent was significantly lower in the Wide condition. A width-changing virtual corridor could eventually be used as a rehabilitation tool when step width variability is the target of treatment.

In Abstracts of the 26th Annual Meeting of the Gait & Clinical Movement Analysis Society (GCMAS 2021)