What can a Headless Chicken Teach us About Walking?

Abstract

Unlike when you do your math homework, you do not usually have to think about walking—it just happens naturally. We master the ability to walk as children, but the control of walking is complex. To walk, many muscles must act together to produce smooth, coordinated movement of the arms and legs. We sometimes think about where we want to step, but sometimes we do not. We may also choose how fast and which direction we want to go, but we do not actually think about the individual movement of each limb—walking seems so simple and does not require much thought. Although our brains help supervise the control of walking, other parts of the nervous system are what make walking automatic. In fact, the basic pattern of walking is produced and adjusted by networks of cells within the spinal cord, known as central pattern generators.