What is it about?
The paper presents a spinal reflex network that generates diverse human locomotion behaviors including walking and running, acceleration and deceleration, slope and stair negotiation, turning, and deliberate obstacle avoidance.
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Why is it important?
The control of human locomotion is not fully understood. Without direct evidence, it is often assumed that central pattern generators (CPGs), which generate rhythmic patterns without rhythmic inputs, play a key role in the spinal control of human locomotion. However, the paper demonstrates in neuromuscular physics simulation that many human locomotion behaviors can be generated by integrating reflex pathways, with no CPG.
Perspectives
Given that current experimental techniques do not allow us to directly "measure" the controller that underlies human locomotion, we might gain better understanding through neuromuscular simulation studies. In addition, versatile computational neuromuscular models can be used as a simulation test-bed for examining new rehabilitation methods or assistive devices before conducting experiments with real human subjects. The neuromuscular model proposed in the paper is versatile. It is robust to external disturbances (ex. blindly walk on rough terrain with height changes of +-10cm) and can generate diverse locomotion behaviors including walking and running, acceleration and deceleration, slope and stair negotiation, turning, and deliberate obstacle avoidance. Best to my knowledge, there is no other model with such level of versatility.
Dr Seungmoon Song
Carnegie Mellon University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: A neural circuitry that emphasizes spinal feedback generates diverse behaviours of human locomotion, The Journal of Physiology, June 2015, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1113/jp270228.
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