Vertebral motions of the lumbar spine during gait

Abstract

Hence, our aim was to compare spatio-temporal parameters during gait at comfortable speed, to gait with a dual-task of cognitive and motor character, respectivelyin subjects with mild to moderate PD. Patients/materials and methods: 34 subjects with mild to moderate PD (mean age: 71±6 years, HY disease duration: mean 5±4 years) performed gait at their comfortable speed, and during a cognitive and motor DT, respectively, using an instrumented walkway system (GAITRite). During gait with a cognitive DT, the subjects were instructed to recite every second letter of the Swedish alphabet (followinga randomized scheme),whereas the motor dual-task consisted of carrying a tray with a glass of water. Each task was performed 6 times. Between gait condition divergences were analyzed with repeated measurements analysis of variance and significant main effects were explored with Tukey HSD post-hoc test. Results: Walking with a cognitive DT showed decreased velocity, cadence, step length, swing phase, and increased step width (p≤0.001) in comparison to gait at comfortable speed, whereas walking with a motor DT only showed decreased step length and swing phase (p≤0.034). In addition, the step length variability increased while walking with a cognitive DT as compared to both gait at comfortable speed and with a motor task (p≤0.045). Discussion and conclusions: The results of this study indicate that a cognitive task interferes more with walking than a motor task. However, studies controlling varied task difficulty have suggested more complex tasks to accentuate gait interference [4], which may indicate that the cognitive task we used were more complex than the motor task. Nevertheless, these results indicate that both cognitive and motor dualtasks interfere with the gait pattern of subjects with mild to moderate PD. This may suggest a gait training regime, including both cognitive and motor dual-task conditions, to be beneficiary in subjects with PD. However, more studies are needed in this area.