Abstract
Postural control is important to cope with demands of everyday life. It has been shown that both attentional demand (i.e., cognitive processing) and fatigue affect postural control in young adults. However, their combined effect is still unresolved. Therefore, we investigated the effects of fatigue on single- (ST) and dual-task (DT) postural control. Twenty young subjects (age: 23.7 ± 2.7) performed an all-out incremental treadmill protocol. After each completed stage, one-legged-stance performance on a force platform under ST (i.e., one-legged-stance only) and DT conditions (i.e., one-legged-stance while subtracting serial 3s) was registered. On a second test day, subjects conducted the same balance tasks for the control condition (i.e., non-fatigued). Results showed that heart rate, lactate, and ventilation increased following fatigue (all p < 0.001; d = 4.2–21). Postural sway and sway velocity increased during DT compared to ST (all p < 0.001; d = 1.9–2.0) and fatigued compared to non-fatigued condition (all p < 0.001; d = 3.3–4.2). In addition, postural control deteriorated with each completed stage during the treadmill protocol (all p < 0.01; d = 1.9–3.3). The addition of an attention-demanding interference task did not further impede one-legged-stance performance. Although both additional attentional demand and physical fatigue affected postural control in healthy young adults, there was no evidence for an overadditive effect (i.e., fatigue-related performance decrements in postural control were similar under ST and DT conditions). Thus, attentional resources were sufficient to cope with the DT situations in the fatigue condition of this experiment.
Highlights
Postural control is important to cope with the demands of our environment and to minimize the risk of falls [1]
Heart rate significantly increased during the fatigue compared to the control condition and with each completed stage
Results showed that (1) postural control was impaired following the fatigue protocol; (2) postural control was compromised during DT compared to ST; (3) impairments in ST and DT postural control increased with advancing levels of fatigue; and (4) fatigue did not further impede postural control during DT compared to ST
Summary
Postural control is important to cope with the demands of our environment (e.g., walking on cobblestones) and to minimize the risk of falls [1]. A large body of literature has illustrated that attentional demand is needed to control posture [2,3,4]. Postural sway increased during one-legged stance while concurrently performing a verbal (e.g., spelling words) [2] or arithmetic (e.g., serial subtraction [4, 5]) interference task. These findings clearly indicate that attentional capacity is required to maintain postural control.
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