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Texan researchers have wondered about\u00a0what our brains are thinking\u00a0during walks. In a NewsWise<\/em> article, they studied the way people’s vision directed the placement of their feet while walking.<\/p>\n Their findings will benefit patients who cannot move well due to aging, Parkinson’s disease, and strokes. It will also help the development of prosthetic and robotic limbs.<\/p>\n If you want to get across natural terrain as quickly and safely as possible, you need\u00a0excellent coordination between your eyes and your body. Researchers still don’t have a good idea of how our various body parts\u00a0cooperate across uneven terrain. (Related:\u00a0Feel happy IMMEDIATELY by just knitting; scientists say working with your hands positively affects the neurochemistry of your brain.)<\/p>\n Researchers tend to study vision separately from locomotion.\u00a0They also hold\u00a0their experiments in rigidly controlled laboratories instead of outdoors.<\/p>\n The University of Texas in Austin<\/em> (UT Austin) changed that up. Researcher Jonathan Matthis of UT Austin’s Center for Perceptual Systems<\/em> noted how every part of our perceptuomotor system pitches in\u00a0during visually guided walking.<\/p>\n “To really understand it, you need to know how vision works, how planning works, how muscles work, how spines work, how physics work,\u201d he said. His team published their findings in the journal Cell<\/em>.<\/p>\n Matthis took advantage of new motion-capture and eye-tracking technologies to identify notable patterns between the eyes and movement. He and his team put a welding mask around an infrared eye tracker to protect its cameras from sunlight. They also used a motion-tracking suit to calibrate the tracker.<\/p>\n The power of the elements: Discover Colloidal Silver Mouthwash with quality, natural ingredients like Sangre de Drago sap, black walnut hulls, menthol crystals and more. Zero artificial sweeteners, colors or alcohol. Learn more at the Health Ranger Store and help support this news site.<\/em><\/p>\n In the experiment, participants crossed three different types of terrain: Flat, medium, and rough ground. The eye tracker recorded their gaze and full-body kinematics.<\/p>\n Matthis believed eye movements offered important clues about the thought processes of people. Tracking the eyes pointed out the kind of information that the brain\u00a0needs\u00a0for a task.<\/p>\n The UT Austin research team reported that the subjects showed different gaze and walking patterns for each terrain. Participants took quicker and longer strides when crossing flat ground and spent just half the time looking for obstacles.<\/p>\n As they moved into rougher\u00a0terrain, subjects took shorter and slower steps that varied according to the ground. They also studied the ground more than 90 percent of the time to find solid footholds.<\/p>\n In the medium ground, participants looked for solid footing within two steps. In the roughest terrain, they divided their gaze between searching for good footholds a bit further out and planning out their path.<\/p>\n The researchers also reported a surprising pattern. No matter what kind of terrain they traversed, participants always looked 1.5 seconds ahead of them.<\/p>\n Earlier studies discovered a similar “lookahead” timing involving research or motor actions like climbing stairs, driving vehicles, and reaching for objects. This timing could be very important when it comes to directing human movement.<\/p>\n Matthis believed the regular lookahead\u00a0timing hinted at an overall movement strategy that the walker uses and adjusts\u00a0according to the terrain. People use vision to\u00a0figure out what they can expect 1.5 seconds ahead of them.<\/p>\n This led him to theorize\u00a0that\u00a0a good action decision\u00a0needed information and\u00a0consideration of the pros and cons. The best way to bring out this human behavior is to take the research into a natural environment.<\/p>\n “This gives us more opportunity to discover things we didn\u2019t expect, which will help us advance our scientific knowledge to the benefit of improving clinical treatment of gait-related disorders,\u201d Matthis said.<\/p>\n Learn more about how your brain works during innocuous actions like walking at Brain<\/em>.<\/p>\n Sources include:<\/p>\n NewsWise<\/p>\n Cell<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Texan researchers have wondered about\u00a0what our brains are thinking\u00a0during walks. In a NewsWise article, they studied the way people’s vision directed the placement of their feet while walking. Their findings will benefit patients who cannot move well due to aging, Parkinson’s disease, and strokes. It will also help the development of prosthetic and robotic limbs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1053],"tags":[140,75,894,1079],"class_list":{"0":"post-6380","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-brain","9":"tag-researchers","10":"tag-track","11":"tag-walk"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthoptibody.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Eye movements are the windows into the walker’s mind<\/h2>\n
No matter the terrain, walkers always\u00a0practice 1.5-second lookahead timing<\/h2>\n