McAllister Megan J, Chen Anthony, Selinger Jessica C
School of Kinesiology and Health Studies, Queen's University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada.
J Exp Biol. 2025 Feb 15;228(Suppl_1). doi: 10.1242/jeb.248125. Epub 2025 Feb 20.
Nearly a century of research has shown that humans, and other animals, tend to move in ways that minimize energy use. A growing body of evidence suggests that energetic cost is not only an outcome of our movement, but also plays a central role in continuously shaping it. This has led to an emerging research area, at the nexus between biomechanics and neuroscience, termed behavioural energetics, which is focused on understanding the mechanisms of energy optimization and how this shapes our coordination and behaviour. In this Review, we first summarize the existing evidence for and against our preferred locomotor behaviours coinciding with energy optima. Although evidence of our preference for energetically optimal gaits has existed for decades, new research is revealing its relevance across a surprising array of dynamic locomotor tasks and complex environments. We next discuss evidence that we adapt our gait toward energy optima over short timescales and in novel environments, which we view as a more stringent test that energy expenditure is optimized in real-time. This necessitates that we sense energy use, or proxies for it, on similar timescales. We therefore next provide an overview of candidate sensory mechanisms of energy expenditure. Finally, we discuss how behavioural energetics can be applied to novel wearable assistive technologies and rehabilitation paradigms, and conclude the Review by outlining what we see as the most important future challenges and opportunities in behavioural energetics.
近一个世纪的研究表明，人类和其他动物倾向于以最小化能量消耗的方式移动。越来越多的证据表明，能量消耗不仅是我们运动的结果，而且在持续塑造运动方式方面也起着核心作用。这催生了一个新兴的研究领域，它处于生物力学和神经科学的交叉点，被称为行为能量学，其重点是理解能量优化的机制以及这如何塑造我们的协调能力和行为。在本综述中，我们首先总结了支持和反对我们偏好的运动行为与能量最优状态相吻合的现有证据。尽管几十年来一直存在我们偏好能量最优步态的证据，但新的研究正在揭示其在一系列令人惊讶的动态运动任务和复杂环境中的相关性。接下来，我们讨论我们在短时间尺度上以及在新环境中使步态朝着能量最优状态调整的证据，我们将其视为对能量消耗实时优化的更严格测试。这就要求我们在类似的时间尺度上感知能量消耗或其替代指标。因此，我们接下来概述能量消耗的候选感觉机制。最后，我们讨论行为能量学如何应用于新型可穿戴辅助技术和康复模式，并通过概述我们认为行为能量学未来最重要的挑战和机遇来结束本综述。
