Robot-assisted gait training with complementary auditory feedback: Results on short-term motor adaptation

Abstract

This paper investigates how different modalities of auditory feedback may affect the short-term gait modifications induced by 4 consecutive training sessions with a robotic exoskeleton. N = 20 healthy subjects, 18-30 years old, were randomly assigned to 4 groups. During training, participants walked on a treadmill and were asked to modify their footpath to match a modified gait pattern, while receiving assistance by the robot (kinetic guidance). The control group received additional visual feedback, while the three experimental groups were provided with three modalities of auditory feedback. The third experimental group also received the same visual feedback as the control group. Differences in gait kinematics and symmetry among the training modalities were assessed in three post-training sessions.