Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Institute of Liberal Arts, Kyushu Institute of Technology, 1-1 Sensui-cho, Tobata-ku, Kitakyushu-shi, Fukuoka, 804-8550, Japan.
Department of Clothing, Faculty of Human Sciences and Design, Japan Women's University, 2-8-1 Mejirodai, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 112-0015, Japan.
Exp Brain Res. 2024 Aug;242(8):1861-1870. doi: 10.1007/s00221-024-06863-2. Epub 2024 Jun 10.
Rolling walkers are common walking aids for individuals with poor physical fitness or balance impairments. There is no doubt that rolling walkers are useful in assisting locomotion. On the other hand, it is arguable that walking with rolling walkers (WW) is effective for maintaining or restoring the nervous systems that are recruited during conventional walking (CW). This is because the differences and similarities of the neural control of these locomotion forms remain unknown. The purpose of the present study was to compare the neural control of WW and CW from the perspective of a split-belt adaptation paradigm and reveal how the adaptations that take place in WW and CW would affect each other. The anterior component of the ground reaction (braking) forces was measured during and after walking on a split-belt treadmill by 10 healthy subjects, and differences in the peak braking forces between the left and right sides were calculated as the index of the split-belt adaptation (the degree of asymmetry). The results demonstrated that (1) WW enabled subjects to respond to the split-belt condition immediately after its start as compared to CW; (2) the asymmetry movement pattern acquired by the split-belt adaptation in one gait mode (i.e., CW or WW) was less transferable to the other gait mode; (3) the asymmetry movement pattern acquired by the split-belt adaptation in CW was not completely washed out by subsequent execution in WW and vice versa. The results suggest unique control of WW and the specificity of neural control between WW and CW; use of the walkers is not necessarily appropriate as training for CW from the perspective of neural control.
轮式助行器是身体虚弱或平衡功能障碍者常用的步行辅助工具。毫无疑问，轮式助行器在辅助移动方面非常有用。另一方面，使用轮式助行器（WW）进行行走对于维持或恢复在常规行走（CW）中募集的神经系统是否有效是有争议的。这是因为这些运动形式的神经控制的差异和相似之处尚不清楚。本研究的目的是从分裂带适应范式的角度比较 WW 和 CW 的神经控制，并揭示 WW 和 CW 中发生的适应如何相互影响。10 名健康受试者在分裂带跑步机上行走时和行走后测量地面反作用力（制动）力的前向分量，并计算左右两侧峰值制动力之间的差异作为分裂带适应（不对称程度）的指标。结果表明：（1）与 CW 相比，WW 使受试者能够在开始后立即对分裂带条件做出反应；（2）在一种步态模式（即 CW 或 WW）中通过分裂带适应获得的不对称运动模式向另一种步态模式的转移较少；（3）CW 中分裂带适应获得的不对称运动模式不会完全被随后的 WW 执行消除，反之亦然。结果表明 WW 具有独特的控制方式，WW 和 CW 之间的神经控制具有特异性；从神经控制的角度来看，使用助行器不一定适合 CW 训练。
