Short-Term Motor Learning and Retention During Visually Guided Walking in Persons With Multiple Sclerosis

Background: The ability to adapt, a form of short-term motor learning, and retain this adaptation, is essential for rehabilitation and for day-to-day living. Yet, little research is available on this topic in persons with multiple sclerosis (PwMS), particularly in relation to complex walking tasks.
Objective: To determine the ability of PwMS to learn and retain a novel relationship between visual input and motor output—or visuomotor map—during visually guided walking.
Methods: Nineteen PwMS and seventeen healthy controls performed a precision walking task while adapting to prism lenses that altered the normal visuomotor map on one day, and again after a one-week delay. The task required individuals to walk and step onto two targets without stopping. To quantify motor performance, we determined foot placement error relative to the targets.
Results: PwMS with mild disability and healthy controls attenuated foot placement error over repeated trials when exposed to the novel mapping, and demonstrated a similar rate and magnitude of adaptation in the first learning session. Both groups equally retained the adaptation one week later, reflected by reduced foot placement error and a faster rate of error reduction in that session.
Conclusion: PwMS can learn and retain a novel visuomotor mapping during a precision-based walking task. This suggests that PwMS with mild disability have the capacity for short-term motor learning and retention, indicating that neural plasticity is preserved.