The interacting effect of cognitive and motor task demands on performance of gait, balance and cognition in young adults

Technology-assisted and motivational programme for a blended approach to prevent and manage balance, gaze, mobility and cognitive decline with age

“…A treadmill is an excellent choice to conduct core balance, walking stability and gait assessment within the DT paradigm, i.e. walking while viewing a standard LCD/LED monitor which can be used to present a broad, diverse array of cognitive content and therefore can incorporate many types and levels of executive functions 27 . Treadmills are widely used clinically, and have become a commonplace in most fitness, wellness and community centres.…”

“…See Figure 1 for illustration of the platform and typical recording. Methods have been derived 27 to quantify the following variables during treadmill walking from hundreds of consecutive steps; Documenting safety is an important part of any balance mobility exercise programme for 'at risk' older adults to inform therapists and trainers when and how a client is performing, whether they are experiencing any difficulty, and how they are progressing in their individualized exercise programme. Although…”

“…Proof-of-concept of a computerbased therapeutic gaming platform (TGP), which integrates a number of game-based exercises and cognitive activities has been provided by Szturm and colleagues 4,27,32,33 . The TGP was designed for targeted exercises and activities that can incorporate: Competing interests: none declared.…”

“…With this simple method, seamless, responsive and high fidelity hands-free interaction with any computer application (custom or commercial exercise/ brain fitness game) is made possible. Computer controlled goaldirected movements can provide an easily accessible way to track a wide range of cognitive events, and while performing complex motor behaviours such as walking (see Szturm et al 2013) 27 .…”

“…These contextual game events are sorted by direction and amplitude to obtain multiple event groupings with similar movement features ( Figure 3C). For a full description, see Lockery, Peters, Szturm et al 33 and Szturm et al 27 features of the test game events provide a basis for objective quantification of cognitive functions, as illustrated in Figure 3D, which include (i) game success rate (percentage of target caught), (ii) average motor response time (time from appearance of the target to start of the paddle movement), (iii) average movement execution time and (iv) movement efficiency.…”