Neural control of balance during walking

Neural control of standing balance has been extensively studied. However, most falls occur during walking rather than standing, and findings from standing balance research do not necessarily carry over to walking. This is primarily due to the constraints of the gait cycle: Body configuration changes dramatically over the gait cycle, necessitating different responses as this configuration changes. Notably, certain responses can only be initiated at specific points in the gait cycle, leading to onset times ranging from 350 to 600ms, much longer than what is observed during standing (50–200ms). Here, we investigated the neural control of upright balance during walking. Specifically, how the brain transforms sensory information related to upright balance into corrective motor responses. We used visual disturbances of 20 healthy young subjects walking in a virtual reality cave to induce the perception of a fall to the side and analyzed the muscular responses, changes in ground reaction force...