Assessment of Brain Function in Patients With Cognitive Impairment Based on fNIRS and Gait Analysis

Abstract

BackgroundEarly detection of mild cognitive impairment is crucial in the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). This study aims to explore the changes in gait and brain co-functional connectivity between cognitively healthy and cognitively impaired groups under dual-task walking through the functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and gait analysis devices.MethodThis study used fNIRS device and gait analysis devices to collect the data of 54 older adults. According to the Mini-mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) scales, the older adults were cognitively healthy (control group) and cognitively impaired (experimental group), of which 38 were in the control group and 16 were in the experimental group. The experiment was divided into a total of three sets of task experiments: a walking-only experiment, a dual-task walking-easy (DTW-easy) experiment, and a dual-task walking-difficult (DTW-difficult) experiment.Main ResultFor the cognitively impaired and cognitively healthy populations, there were no significant differences in overall functional connectivity, region of interest (ROI) connection strength, and gait performance during single-task walking between the two groups.Whereas the performances of DTW differed significantly from the single-task walking in terms of between-group variability of functional connectivity strength change values, and ROI connection strength change values in relation to the dual-task cost of gait. Finally, the cognitively impaired group was significantly more affected by DTW-difficult tasks than the cognitively healthy group.ConclusionThis study provides a new approach to assist in the diagnosis of people with cognitive impairment and provides a new research pathway for the identification of cognitive impairment.

Alterations in brain functional connectivity in patients with mild cognitive impairment: A systematic review and meta‐analysis of functional near‐infrared spectroscopy studies

“…Eventually, 13 studies were included in this systematic review and meta‐analysis. Among them, 13 studies were included in the qualitative synthesis (Bu et al., 2019 ; Ghafoor et al., 2019 ; Li et al., 2019 ; Liu et al., 2021 ; Nguyen et al., 2019 ; Niu et al., 2019 ; Tang & Chan, 2018 ; Wang et al., 2022 ; Yang & Hong, 2021 ; Yoo & Hong, 2019a , 2019 b ; Yu et al., 2020 ; Zhang et al., 2022 ), whereas only 2 studies met the criteria for quantitative synthesis (Bu et al., 2019 ; Zhang et al., 2022 ). The PRISMA flow diagram of the literature search and study selection strategy is shown in Figure 1 .…”

“…Dual‐task paradigms have gain increased popularity in brain studies, providing a gold standard for evaluating the “central executive system” (Bishnoi et al., 2021 ). Studies investigating FC during dual‐task walking have shown mixed findings, revealing both increased and reduced prefrontal‐related connectivity (Liu et al., 2021 ; Wang et al., 2022 ). These inconsistencies might be attributed to task differences.…”

“…They further demonstrated that the significantly different FC between groups were negatively correlated with relative symmetry index (IDps), suggesting that gait parameters might reflect the abnormal changes in FC in MCI individuals (Liu et al, 2021). Wang et al (2022) revealed that the FC of MCI patients was generally weakened compared to that of the HC during calculatingwalking task, with the brain regions showing decreased FC mainly associated with the left prefrontal cortex and the right prefrontal cortex. however, in some channels, such as the medial prefrontal cortex, FC was more correlated in the MCI patients than in the HC (Yoo & Hong, 2019b).…”