Data from: Visual context influences how humans walk on winding paths

During walking, proactive balance control mechanisms enable individuals to
anticipate and respond to changes in their environment, such as terrain
layout or obstacles. These mechanisms rely on sensory inputs, particularly
vision, to adjust gait patterns in advance. Visuomotor coupling integrates
information from central and peripheral vision to guide locomotion.
Central vision provides detailed information about the walking path,
including surface characteristics and layout. Peripheral vision processes
environmental landmarks to support spatial orientation, depth perception,
and self-motion. Together, these inputs allow the nervous system to plan
and execute gait adjustments. Disruptions to visual information, whether
due to reduced visual acuity, contrast sensitivity, or environmental
conditions, can significantly alter walking behavior and challenge
proactive balance control. The study associated with these data was
designed to investigate how changes in the availability of central and
peripheral visual information affect walking behavior when the fundamental
walking task remains the same. It also investigated whether these effects
vary with path complexity. For the study, 28 young healthy human adult
participants (16F/12M; Age 26.2±4.2yrs) walked on both straight and
winding virtual paths, while visual information from the walking path and
surrounding environment was systematically reduced. This dataset includes
their head, pelvis, and feet kinematics as they performed each of these
tasks. Additional files provide participant characteristics, such as
demographics, anthropometrics, and assessment scores, as well as a
marker-set definition key. The study was designed to grow our
understanding of visual perception-driven gait adaptations during
different goal-directed walking tasks. These data offer a resource to
investigate visual and mechanical factors that affect dynamic balance
control during walking.