Adapting spatiotemporal gait symmetry to electrical stimulation during treadmill walking

Individuals with neurological impairments often exhibit asymmetrical gait patterns. This study highlighted the potential of functional electrical stimulation (FES) to improve gait symmetry during treadmill training and investigated whether our proposed FES perturbation paradigm could induce gait adaptation concerning spatial and temporal gait symmetry in healthy subjects. In the FES perturbation paradigm, both legs received electrical pulses at the same period as the subjects’ initial stride duration, and the temporal gap between the two pulses for each leg was manipulated over 7 minutes. Following this, subjects continued to walk for another 5 minutes without FES. For the implicit trial (unconscious reaction to FES), subjects were asked to walk comfortably in response to the stimulation. For the explicit trial (conscious reaction to FES), subjects were asked to explicitly synchronize their toe-off phase to the stimulation. To examine the effects of the FES perturbation, we measured ste..., All experiments were performed on a treadmill (Woodway USA, Waukesha, WI) equipped with supporting handrails to ensure the safety of subjects. All subjects were given an approximate 5-minute preparatory period to adjust to walking on the treadmill. Two motion-capturing markers were attached to the back of the subjects’ shoes and tracked by a camera-based motion-capturing system (Optotrak 3D Investigator, Norther Digital Inc. Canada). This system located the positions of the markers and sent the data to a PC in real time using a program developed with LabVIEW (National Instruments Corp., TX) to measure the subjects’ spatiotemporal gait parameters such as step length, stride period, and stance duration. In this study, the position of the most forward marker was designated as the heel strike position, while the most backward marker position was identified as the toe-off position. We determined the stride period by measuring the interval from one heel strike to the next, and the stance dura..., , # Adapting spatiotemporal gait symmetry to electrical stimulation during treadmill walking

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.d7wm37q7w](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.d7wm37q7w)

The dataset includes asymmetry for step length, stance time, and double limb support time. The symmetry ratio was computed for each gait cycle by using the following formula: 100×(right leg measure – left leg measure)/(0.5×(right leg measure + left leg measure)).

## Description of the data and file structure

Data were stored on each tab by different conditions (explicit and implicit conditions) and by different gait parameters (step length symmetry, stand time symmetry, and double limb support time symmetry). The experimental trial consisted of three states: a 4-min baseline period, a 7-min perturbation period, and a 5-min post-perturbation period. Gait symmetry values were calculated in successive 30-second intervals. Therefore, each row of the data set represents data obtained from a successive 30-second time ...