Lack of sleep affects your walk. Know how
News 24
A new study, by researchers at MIT and the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, reports that walking and specifically, how well we can control our stride, or gait, can indeed be affected by lack of sleep.
In experiments with student volunteers, the team found that overall, the fewer sleep students got, the less control they had when walking during a treadmill test. For students who pulled an all-nighter before the test, this gait control plummeted even further. The findings were published in the journal Interestingly, for those who didn't stay up all night before the test, but who generally had less-than-ideal sleep during the week, those who slept in on weekends performed better than those who didn't.
"Scientifically, it wasn't clear that almost automatic activities like walking would be influenced by lack of sleep," says Hermano Krebs, a principal research scientist in MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering. "We also find that compensating for sleep could be an important strategy. For instance, for those who are chronically sleep-deprived, like shift workers, clinicians, and some military personnel, if they build in regular sleep compensation, they might have better control over their gait."
Krebs and his co-authors, including lead author Arturo Forner-Cordero of the University of Sao Paulo, have published the study in the journal Scientific Reports.
Brainy influenceThe act of walking was once seen as an entirely automatic process, involving very little conscious, cognitive control. Animal experiments with a treadmill suggested that walking appeared to be an automatic process, governed mainly by reflexive, spinal activity, rather than more cognitive processes involving the brain.
"This is the case with quadrupeds, but the idea was more controversial in humans," Krebs says. Indeed, since those experiments, scientists including Krebs have shown that the act of walking is slightly more involved than once thought. Over the last decade, Krebs has extensively studied gait control and the mechanics of walking, in order to develop strategies and assistive robotics for patients who have suffered strokes and other motion-limiting conditions.
In previous experiments, he has shown, for instance, that healthy subjects can adjust their gait to match subtle changes in visual stimuli, without realizing they are doing so. These results suggested that walking involves some subtle, conscious influence, in addition to more automatic processes.