How many people would not like their dear ones suffering from brain injuries to regain their normal walking ability again? But again, this is no easy job for one, like also training stroke survivors.
Ah! A ‘treadmill’ can be the answer! Yes, treadmill – but this is no ordinary treadmill. The split-belt treadmill is a weird one – it is a ‘sloppy versions of Michael Jackson’s moonwalk’.
This bizarre, but amazing machine is capable of revealing how the ‘brain and spinal cord circuitry’ can rewire itself.
The split belt of the custom-built treadmill is kept hidden. One of it moves one side, one foot backward while the other moves forward. They can move at different speeds.
This can help inform how separate nerve networks control each leg’s movement and how networks can be retrained to change someone’s innate walking patterns, even if for a short period – it matters.
After personally testing the treadmill, Bastian said,
The amazing thing about walking control (is) when you try to consciously override things, it doesn’t work so well.
The belts start moving and if you think about it, you start to screw it up. If you just let your system take over, it’s these lower, less-conscious control networks that can do this, no sweat. Those are the ones we want to train.
The custom-built treadmill’s next challenge perhaps would be to make people walk not just better, but permanently.
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