Foot placement control underlies stable locomotion across species.

ABSTRACT: Animals navigate their environment stably without inefficient course corrections despite unavoidable errors. In humans, this stability is achieved by modulating the placement of the foot on each step such that recent errors are corrected. However, it is unknown whether animals with diverse nervous systems and body mechanics use such foot placement control; foot trajectories of many-legged animals are considered to be stereotypical velocity-driven patterns, as opposed to error-driven. Here, we put forth a unified "feedforward-feedback" control structure for stable locomotion that combines velocity-driven and body state error-driven foot placement. We provide empirical support for this control structure across flies, mice, and humans by mining their natural locomotor variability, finding tha

SUBMITTER: De Comite A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12582247 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature