Abstract
Background: Postural control and cognition are affected by aging. We investigated whether cognitive distraction influenced neural activity differently in young and older adults during a game-like mediolateral weight-shifting task with a personalized task load.Methods: Seventeen healthy young and 17 older adults performed a balance game, involving hitting virtual wasps, serial subtractions and a combination of both (dual-task). A motion analysis system estimated each subject's center of mass position. Cortical activity in five regions was assessed by measuring oxygenated hemoglobin (HbO2) with a functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy system.Results: When adding cognitive load to the game, weight-shifting speed decreased irrespective of age, but older adults reduced the wasp-hits more than young adults. Accompanying these changes, older adults decreased HbO2 in the left pre-frontal cortex (PFC) and frontal eye fields (FEF) compared to single-tasking, a finding not seen in young adults. Additionally, lower HbO2 levels were found during dual-tasking compared to the summed activation of the two single tasks in all regions except for the right PFC. These relative reductions were specific for the older age group in the left premotor cortex (PMC), the right supplementary motor area (SMA), and the left FEF.Conclusion: Older adults showed more compromised neural activity than young adults when adding a distraction to a challenging balance game. We interpret these changes as competitive downgrading of neural activity underpinning the age-related deterioration of game performance during dual-tasking. Future work needs to ascertain if older adults can train their neural flexibility to withstand balance challenges during daily life activities.
Highlights
Older adults (OA) show deficits in postural control (Park et al, 2016) and dynamic weight-shifting (De Vries et al, 2014), which have been linked to an increase in fall risk (Delbaere et al, 2010)
When adding cognitive load to the game, weight-shifting speed decreased irrespective of age, but older adults reduced the wasp-hits more than young adults. Accompanying these changes, older adults decreased oxygenated hemoglobin (HbO2) in the left pre-frontal cortex (PFC) and frontal eye fields (FEF) compared to single-tasking, a finding not seen in young adults
Older adults showed more compromised neural activity than young adults when adding a distraction to a challenging balance game
Summary
Older adults (OA) show deficits in postural control (Park et al, 2016) and dynamic weight-shifting (De Vries et al, 2014), which have been linked to an increase in fall risk (Delbaere et al, 2010). The risk of falling increases with cognitive distraction and dual-tasking (Muhaidat et al, 2014; Li et al, 2018), possibly because a significant attentional demand is required for postural control with age (Woollacott and Shumway-Cook, 2002). Understanding brain activity changes during performance of a challenging balance game with and without cognitive distraction is a first step in grasping the neural impact of these task loads on OA. We investigated whether cognitive distraction influenced neural activity differently in young and older adults during a game-like mediolateral weight-shifting task with a personalized task load
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