Health and Human Performance
Locomotion Neuromechanics Lab
Led by Julia Choi · Applied Physiology and Kinesiology
What we study
The lab studies how people learn to walk, focusing on healthy individuals and those with neurological disorders. They use brain stimulation, imaging, and biomechanical measurements to understand how the brain and muscles work together to control movement.
What working here is like
- Clinical
- Human participants
- Projects
- 3
- Papers
- 5
Current projects
Sequence learning
Studies how people learn a new sequence of walking steps, one of the lab's paradigms for understanding locomotor learning in healthy people and patients with neurological disorders.
Split-belt adaptation
exploring how walking changes when surfaces move at different speeds
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Visuomotor adaptation
Tests how people adapt their walking when visual feedback changes, one of the lab's experimental ways of studying how the brain and body learn new gait patterns for rehabilitation research.
Summaries are written by AI in plain language from public symposium abstracts and may be imperfect.
Recent papers, explained
- Exploring the layers of fatigue in Parkinson’s Disease: A comprehensive analysis of its prevalence and contributing factors
2024 · Clinical Parkinsonism & Related Disorders
Examines fatigue prevalence and factors in Parkinson’s disease over 10 years using a large patient cohort.
- Visuospatial cognition predicts performance on an obstructed vision obstacle walking task in older adults
2024 · Experimental Gerontology
Develops a new walking test for older adults that challenges cognitive control without dual-task limitations.
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- Sleep benefits perceptual but not movement-based learning of locomotor sequences
2024 · Scientific Reports
Tests whether sleep improves learning of walking patterns by comparing perceptual and motor learning after sleep vs. wake.
- Reduced corticospinal drive and inflexible temporal adaptation during visually guided walking in older adults
2023 · Journal of Neurophysiology
Finds older adults have weaker brain signals for walking and adjust step timing less flexibly than younger adults.
- Cortico-Subthalamic Field Potentials Support Classification of the Natural Gait Cycle in Parkinson’s Disease and Reveal Individualized Spectral Signatures
2022 · eNeuro
Uses brain and subthalamic signals to identify walking patterns in Parkinson’s disease patients.
Plain-language summaries are AI-written and reviewed by us; check the paper for details.
How to reach out
Julia Choi hasn't set up this page yet. Their UF Scholars profile lists their publications.