BME SEMINAR
Gelsy Torres-Oviedo, PhD,
Associate Professor at The University of Pittsburgh
About:
Dr. Gelsy Torres-Oviedo is an accomplished researcher and educator specializing in locomotor learning, motor control, and rehabilitation. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh and Co-director of both the MS2PhD BRIDGE Fellowship and the Program in Neural Computation, a joint initiative between Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Torres-Oviedo earned her B.S. in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin, a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Georgia Tech-Emory University, and completed postdoctoral training in Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University.
Her research focuses on understanding how humans adapt their walking patterns through interactions with their environment, with a particular emphasis on aging and neurological conditions such as stroke. Dr. Torres-Oviedo has made significant contributions to identifying age-related changes in locomotor plasticity, understanding muscle coordination for balance and locomotion, and characterizing gait adaptability in older adults and stroke survivors using split-belt treadmill paradigms. Her work has provided critical insights into how cognitive and neural mechanisms influence gait adaptability across the lifespan.
Dr. Torres-Oviedo has received numerous honors, including the NSF CAREER Award and the Early Career Award from the Society for Neural Control of Movement. She has led multiple NIH- and NSF-funded projects. Through her leadership roles and interdisciplinary collaborations, Dr. Torres-Oviedo continues to advance knowledge in motor learning and rehabilitation, aiming to improve mobility and independence for older adults and individuals with movement disorders.
Abstract:
Locomotor adaptation and savings, the ability to adjust walking patterns to novel environments and recall previously learned movements, are essential for mobility. However, the neural mechanisms underlying these processes, particularly their changes with aging, remain unclear. We hypothesize that locomotor adaptation initially relies on attentional resources from the prefrontal cortex (PFC), with practice enabling more automatic control and reducing attentional demands. Age-related declines in neural substrates like the basal ganglia, cerebellum, and PFC may disrupt this shift, requiring older adults to rely more heavily on cognitive compensation strategies.
To investigate these mechanisms, we conducted two studies examining locomotor adaptation and savings in young and older adults. In the first study, comparing young (n=17) and older adults (n=22), we assessed PFC activation using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) during dual-task walking to measure attentional control of gait and evaluated locomotor savings through repeated exposures to split-belt walking, where each leg moves at different speeds. We found older adults exhibited reduced locomotor savings (p=0.005) and required greater PFC activation during walking tasks (p=0.05), indicating increased reliance on attentional resources. Interestingly, older adults with higher PFC activation demonstrated better locomotor savings (rho=0.50, p=0.02), suggesting cognitive compensation may aid motor memory recall in aging.
A preliminary study in young adults (n=13) further explored the effect of practice on locomotor adaptation using split-belt treadmill walking. Initially, high PFC activation and reduced spinal reflex gains (H-reflex) indicated reliance on attentional resources and inhibition of spinal control for this novel task. After repeated practice sessions, participants improved walking performance, with reduced step length asymmetry, decreased PFC activation, and restored spinal excitability.
These findings reveal that while young adults achieve automaticity with practice, older adults depend more on attentional strategies to adapt to challenging tasks. Ongoing research aims to understand how cognitive impairments affect these compensatory mechanisms and inform rehabilitation strategies to enhance mobility in older populations.