Hybrid Colloquium: Gaze and Gait: Changes in gaze behavior during locomotor learning

Abstract:
During walking, people use vision to both create movement plans about future steps and correct the execution of the current step. However, the importance of these types of visual information changes based on the movement ability of the person and the difficulty of the terrain. In this talk, I will present the results from two experiments that explore how visual sampling strategies and visual reliance changes with locomotor learning. The first characterizes how visual sampling strategies change as people practice a treadmill-based target stepping task. The second examines how visual reliance changes during the same target stepping task by altering what visual information is available at different points of the locomotor learning process. I will conclude by presenting some preliminary results of these techniques applied to a clinical population, specifically individuals with a concussion. People with a concussion typically exhibit both oculomotor deficits (which would impact what visual information is available) and gait deficits (which often persist beyond the point of recovery when symptoms have returned to baseline). My current work, therefore, proposes that there may be lingering changes to an individual’s gaze behavior which may be causing these persistent gait deficits. https://www.alexcates.com/

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