Abstract
Subsensory noise stimulation targeting sensory receptors has been shown to improve balance control in healthy and impaired individuals. However, the potential for application of this technique in other contexts is still unknown. Gait control and adaptation rely heavily on the input from proprioceptive organs in the muscles and joints. Here we investigated the use of subsensory noise stimulation as a means to influence motor control by “boosting” proprioception during locomotor adaptations to forces delivered by a robot. The forces increase step length unilaterally and trigger an adaptive response that restores the original symmetry. Healthy participants performed two adaptation experiments, one with stimulation applied to the hamstring muscles and one without. We found that participants adapted faster but to a lesser extent when undergoing subsensory stimulation. We argue that this behaviour is due to the dual effect that the stimulation has on the afferents encoding position and velocity that are present in the muscle spindles.
Competing Interest Statement
JN is currently a technical advisor to Accelera, a United States based early state company looking to develop products using stochastic resonance stimulation to improve neurological deficits in patients. PB has received grant support from the American Heart Association, the Department of Defense, the Michael J Fox Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Peabody Foundation including sub-awards on NIH and NSF SBIR grants from Barrett Technology (Newton MA), BioSensics (Watertown MA) and Veristride (Salt Lake City UT). He has also received grant support from Emerge Diagnostics (Carlsbad CA), MC10 (Lexington MA), Mitsui Chemicals (Tokyo Japan), Pfizer (New York City NY), Shimmer Research (Dublin Ireland), and SynPhNe (Singapore). He has served on the Advisory Board of SwanBio (Boston MA). PB serves in an advisory uncompensated role the Michael J Fox Foundation the NIH-funded New England Pediatric Device Consortium, and the Walking Tall-PD clinical trial carried out by Neuroscience Research Australia. He also serves in an uncompensated role on the Scientific Advisory Boards of ABLE Human Motion (Barcelona, Spain), FormSense (San Diego CA, USA), Hocoma AG (Zurich, Switzerland), and Trexo (Toronto, Canada).
