Mobility in the elderly – dual task training a therapeutic modality in neurological patients

Abstract

Gait impairments in simultaneous motor-cognitive tasks have been well documented in neurodegenerative disease populations, including Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s disease. The consequences of these gait impairments in patient populations include an increased fall risk, sedentariness, functional decreases, decreases in self-efficacy, and overall reduced quality of life. Therefore, improving gait performance in dual-task situations is becoming an important focus of rehabilitation for people with neurological disorders. Despite the growing interest in training dual-task performance for people with motor and/or cognitive impairments as a treatment, there is currently a limited amount of available literature, and studies vary in overall quality and methodological rigor. In this narrative review, the objective was to describe the effectiveness of dual-task interventions in different patient populations. Overall, multicomponent interventions incorporating both physical and cognitive components demonstrated promising results for improving gait velocity and other gait parameters in patient populations. However, the results are inconsistent across studies. The discrepancies are not surprising given the differences in study populations, measures of dual-task performance, task difficulty, task prioritization, intervention duration and intensity. Future studies need to explore further the design of successful training interventions as well as the transfer of training-related benefits for enhancing activities of daily living in different clinical populations.