Learning to stand with unexpected sensorimotor delays

Abstract
Data availability
Article and author information
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Abstract

Human standing balance relies on self-motion estimates that are used by the nervous system to detect unexpected movements and enable corrective responses and adaptations in control. These estimates must accommodate for inherent delays in sensory and motor pathways. Here, we used a robotic system to simulate human standing in the anteroposterior direction about the ankles and impose sensorimotor delays into the control of balance. Imposed delays destabilized standing, but through training, participants adapted and re-learned to balance with the delays. Before training, imposed delays attenuated vestibular contributions to balance and triggered perceptions of unexpected standing motion, suggesting increased uncertainty in the internal self-motion estimates. After training, vestibular contributions partially returned to baseline levels and larger delays were needed to evoke perceptions of unexpected standing motion. Through learning, the nervous system accommodates balance sensorimotor delays by causally linking whole-body sensory feedback (initially interpreted as imposed motion) to self-generated balance motor commands.

Data availability

We have created a Dataverse link for the source files needed to generate the group result figures. This can be found at https://doi.org/10.5683/SP2/IKX9ML. Source files will be published and publicly available upon acceptance for publication.

The following data sets were generated

1. Rasman BG
2. Forbes PA
3. Peters RM
4. Ortiz O
5. Franks IM
6. Inglis JT
7. Chua R
8. Blouin JS
(2021) Data and code for Learning to stand with unexpected sensorimotor delays
Scholars Portal Dataverse, doi:10.5683/SP2/IKX9ML.

https://doi.org/10.5683/SP2/IKX9ML

Article and author information

Author details

Brandon G Rasman

School of Physical Education, Sport, and Exercise Sciences, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-8031-8320
Patrick A Forbes

Department of Neuroscience, Erasmus University Medical Centre, Rotterdam, Netherlands

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-0230-9971
Ryan M Peters

Faculty of Kinesiology, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Oscar Ortiz

Faculty of Kinesiology, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, Canada

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Ian Franks

School of Kinesiology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
J Timothy Inglis

School of Kinesiology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Romeo Chua

School of Kinesiology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Jean-Sebastien Blouin

School of Kinesiology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

For correspondence
jsblouin@mail.ubc.ca

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-0046-4051

Funding

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (Graduate Student Scholarship)

Brandon G Rasman

Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO #016. Veni. 188.049)

Patrick A Forbes

Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (RGPIN-2020-05438)

Jean-Sebastien Blouin

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Human subjects: The experimental protocol was verbally explained before the experiment and written informed consent was obtained. The experiments were approved by the University of British Columbia Human Research Ethics Committee and conformed to the Declaration of Helsinki, with the exception of registration to a database.

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.