Introduction
In young adults, pairing a cognitive task with walking can have different effects on gait and cognitive task performance. In some cases, performance clearly declines whereas in others compensatory mechanisms maintain performance. This study investigates the preliminary finding of behavioral improvement in Go/NoGo response inhibition task performance during walking compared with sitting, which was observed at the piloting stage.
Materials and Methods
Mobile brain/body imaging (MoBI) was used to record electroencephalographic (EEG) activity, 3-dimensional (3D) gait kinematics and behavioral responses in the cognitive task, during sitting or walking on a treadmill.
Results
In a cohort of 26 young adults, 14 participants improved in measures of cognitive task performance while walking compared with sitting. These participants exhibited walking-related EEG amplitude reductions over frontal scalp regions during key stages of inhibitory control (conflict monitoring, control implementation, and pre-motor stages), accompanied by reduced stride-to-stride variability and faster responses to stimuli compared with those who did not improve. In contrast, 12 participants who did not improve exhibited no EEG amplitude differences across physical condition.
Discussion
The neural activity changes associated with performance improvement during dual tasking hold promise as cognitive flexibility markers that can potentially help assess cognitive decline in aging and neurodegeneration.
In young adults, pairing a taxing cognitive task with walking can have different effects on gait and cognitive task performance. In some cases, performance clearly declines whereas in others compensatory mechanisms maintain performance even under dual-task conditions. This study set out to investigate the preliminary finding of behavioral improvement in Go-NoGo response inhibition task performance during walking compared to sitting, which was observed at the piloting stage. Mobile Brain/Body Imaging (MoBI) was used to record electroencephalographic (EEG) activity, three-dimensional (3D) gait kinematics and behavioral responses in the cognitive task, during sitting or walking on a treadmill. In a cohort of twenty-six (26) young adults, fourteen (14) participants improved in measures of cognitive task performance while walking compared to sitting. These participants exhibited walking-related EEG amplitude reductions over frontal brain scalp regions during key stages of inhibitory control (conflict monitoring, control implementation and pre-motor stages), accompanied by reduced stride-to-stride variability and faster responses to stimuli compared to those who did not improve. In contrast, the twelve (12) participants who did not improve exhibited no EEG amplitude differences across physical condition. The neural activity changes associated with performance improvement during dual tasking hold promise as cognitive flexibility markers that can potentially help assess cognitive decline in aging and neurodegeneration.
Asynchronous movement of the carotid atheromatous plaque from B-mode ultrasound has been previously reported, and associated with higher risk of stroke, but not quantitatively estimated. Based on the hypothesis that asynchronous plaque motion is associated with vulnerable plaque, in this study, synchronisation patterns of different tissue areas were estimated using cross-correlations of displacement waveforms. In 135 plaques (77 subjects), plaque radial deformation was synchronised by approximately 50% with the arterial diameter, and the mean phase shift was 0.4 s. Within the plaque, the mean phase shifts between the displacements of the top and bottom surfaces were 0.2 s and 0.3 s, in the radial and longitudinal directions, respectively, and the synchronisation about 80% in both directions. Classification of phase-shift-based features using Random Forests yielded Area-Under-the-Curve scores of 0.81, 0.79, 0.89 and 0.90 for echogenicity, symptomaticity, stenosis degree and plaque risk, respectively. Statistical analysis showed that echolucent, high-stenosis and high-risk plaques exhibited higher phase shifts between the radial displacements of their top and bottom surfaces. These findings are useful in the study of plaque kinematics.
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