Gait behavioral and neuromuscular characterization in response to increasing working memory load while walking under optic flow perturbations in young adults

Abstract

AbstractThe precise role of cognitive control on optic flow processing during locomotion has rarely been investigated. Therefore, this study aimed to determine whether coping with unreliable visual inputs during walking requires attentional resources. Twenty-four healthy young adults walked on an instrumented treadmill in a virtual environment under two optic flow conditions: normal (NOF) and perturbed (POF, continuous mediolateral pseudo-random oscillations). Each condition was performed under single-task and dual-task conditions of increasing difficulty (1-, 2-, 3-back). In all conditions, subjective mental workload was estimated (raw NASA-TLX). For kinematic variables, mean, standard deviation, statistical persistence and step-to-step error correction were computed from gait time series in mediolateral and anteroposterior directions. For EMG variables ofsoleusandgluteus medius, the full width at half maximum and the variance ratio were calculated. Performance on N-back tasks was assessed using mean reaction time and d-prime. Cognitive performance was not affected by simultaneous walking in any optic flow condition. Gait variability was altered under POF compared to NOF, so that young adults sought to counteract those perturbations by adopting an effortful gait control strategy, independently of concurrent working memory (WM) load. Increasing WM load led changes first at the neuromuscular level, then at the behavioral level, with a prioritization of gait control in the mediolateral direction. Interestingly, dual-tasking lowered the effects of POF but in the anteroposterior direction only. These findings and their theoretical implications provide valuable insight into the complex interaction effects of cognitive and visual constraints on gait control during treadmill walking.Highlights-Cognitive performance was preserved during DTW regardless of optic flow condition.-ML POF under DTW increased subjective mental workload.-Young adults counteracted ML POF by adopting an effortful gait control strategy.-DTW led them to prioritize gait control in the ML direction over AP direction.-Concurrent WM load attenuated ML POF effect on step velocity variability.