Glossary
Freezing of gait
A sudden, brief inability to start or continue walking despite the intention to move, common in advanced Parkinson's disease.
Freezing of gait (FOG) is an episodic symptom in which a person's feet feel "glued to the floor" for seconds at a time. It often occurs when starting to walk, turning, passing through doorways or approaching a destination, and it is a major cause of falls. FOG is most associated with Parkinson's disease but appears in other parkinsonian conditions too.
Because episodes are brief and situational, FOG is hard to capture in a clinic visit; patients may not experience an episode during the appointment at all. Structured, longitudinal recording — frequency, triggers, duration, relationship to medication timing — is therefore valuable both for care planning and for developing digital biomarkers that can detect or predict episodes.
Why it matters to our work
Freezing-of-gait episodes are one of the signals our platform captures over time, alongside gait, balance, cognition and medication response.