The formation of trajectories for post-stroke patients in visual and non-visual human locomotion

Abstract

This report presents the work conducted for my final year project and is an extension of a study on the control of human locomotion that was conducted by Q.C. Pham and H. Hicheur (Pham, 2009). The control of human locomotion is a relatively unexplored field of science, with very little definitive results obtained that describes the exact behaviour and operation of this complex system. However, in recent years, the neural mechanisms which governs the behaviour of human locomotion and spatial navigation have begun to draw interest in the fields of neurology and medicine. Of particular interest is the behaviour of such mechanisms in humans who suffer from stroke-induced motor deficits (or other neurological disorders that affects motor performance). Pham and Hicheur discovered that the formation of human locomotor trajectories in healthy subjects is a stereotyped activity – the shape of trajectories are similar across subjects and sensorimotor conditions. Through an experiment which tests the effects of vision on the formation of trajectories for healthy subjects and patients who have suffered from neurological disorders (mainly stroke), it is shown that the theory of stereotyped trajectories also apply to subjects with motor deficits. These results support past findings which dissociate cognitive processes (which underlie the planning of spatial routes of trajectories) and motor processes for the formation of locomotor trajectories.