What goes on in our brain while we walk? Researchers track how vision guides foot placement

( Natural News ) Texan researchers have wondered about what our brains are thinking during 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. If you want to get across natural terrain as quickly and safely as possible, you need excellent coordination between your eyes and your body. Researchers still don’t have a good idea of how our various body parts cooperate across uneven terrain. (Related: Feel happy IMMEDIATELY by just knitting; scientists say working with your hands positively affects the neurochemistry of your brain .) Researchers tend to study vision separately from locomotion. They also hold their experiments in rigidly controlled laboratories instead of outdoors. The University of Texas in Austin (UT Austin) changed that up. Researcher Jonathan Matthis of UT Austin’s Center for Perceptual Systems noted how every part of our perceptuomotor system pitches in during visually guided walking. “To really understand it, you need to know how vision works, how planning works, how muscles work, how spines work, how physics work,” he said. His team published their findings in the journal Cell . Eye movements are the windows into the walker’s mind 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. 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. Matthis believed eye movements […]

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