Walking delays auditory processing in humans alongside a global shift in aperiodic neural activity

Walking in 30 adults listening to lateralised pure tones delays auditory N1 latency by < 10 ms compared with standing, without contamination from foot-strike noise.

• Why it matters: Auditory electrophysiology is typically measured during enforced stillness, leaving uncertainty about how natural movement reshapes the timing of sensory processing in humans.
• What they did: Using mobile EEG, participants listened to lateralised pure tones while walking freely or standing; analyses tested and ruled out foot-strike noise effects, and multivariate decoding assessed sound-location timing.
• The result: Walking also decreased the aperiodic exponent across the scalp, and a larger global exponent decrease was associated with a larger N1 delay, linking early auditory slowing to changes in ongoing cortical state.

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