Long-Range Correlations in Stride Intervals May Emerge from Non-Chaotic Walking Dynamics

Jooeun Ahn and Neville Hogan

PLOS ONE, 2013, vol. 8, issue 9, 1-10

Abstract: Stride intervals of normal human walking exhibit long-range temporal correlations. Similar to the fractal-like behaviors observed in brain and heart activity, long-range correlations in walking have commonly been interpreted to result from chaotic dynamics and be a signature of health. Several mathematical models have reproduced this behavior by assuming a dominant role of neural central pattern generators (CPGs) and/or nonlinear biomechanics to evoke chaos. In this study, we show that a simple walking model without a CPG or biomechanics capable of chaos can reproduce long-range correlations. Stride intervals of the model revealed long-range correlations observed in human walking when the model had moderate orbital stability, which enabled the current stride to affect a future stride even after many steps. This provides a clear counterexample to the common hypothesis that a CPG and/or chaotic dynamics is required to explain the long-range correlations in healthy human walking. Instead, our results suggest that the long-range correlation may result from a combination of noise that is ubiquitous in biological systems and orbital stability that is essential in general rhythmic movements.

Date: 2013
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0073239

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0073239

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