Dose-Response Relationship of Medial-Lateral Perturbation Training on Dynamic Stability of Gait

Gait training therapies are methods for improving the walking stability of individuals who have difficulty walking, whether it is due to injury or neuromuscular conditions. Perturbation training that causes individuals to correct their balance and actively improve their stability could potentially lead to longer term benefits for those with unstable gait. Subjects had the medial lateral movement of their center of mass measured through motion-tracking software (D-Flow 3 and Vicon Nexus 2.2). Perturbation training completed with the GRAIL treadmill randomly triggered medial-lateral sway perturbations of 3 cm a total of fifteen times throughout a five minute training period. Data collected to compare baseline, post-training, and one week follow-up dynamic stabilities were recorded over three minutes without any perturbations. There were no statistically significant differences when comparing the results of all subjects at each instance of data collection with each other. Thus, the perturbation training had no significant impact on the dynamic stability of gait. Major limitations that lend to the inconclusive nature of this study include a small sample size, no repetitions, and only one round of training. Further work can be done to better assess the potential impacts of perturbation training on walking stability for therapeutic use.