Parkinson’s Disease (PD) causes gait to be more variable and more random. Gait variability is related to disease severity, and may be a marker of fall risks. Gait in PD is attention-dependent, meaning a distraction while walking could be detrimental. The effects of dual-task walking on gait variability in PD are unclear (in particular fractal fluctuations). This study will determine if dual-task walking impacts stride-to-stride variability compared to normal walking in people with Parkinson’s Disease. We predict that dual-tasking will lead to more random stride-to-stride variability in people with PD, compared to controls. Also, within the PD group, we predict that a previous fall history will correlate with a larger change between normal walking and dual-task walking.
40 people with PD and 40 healthy elderly (HE) will be recruited to participate in 3 randomized trials consisting of: 1) Listening to an audio book while performing a word monitoring task and answering questions. 2) Normal walking at each individual preferred pace. 3) Walking while listening to an audio book and performing a word monitoring task and answering questions. Gait variability will be assessed using Detrended Fluctuation Analysis. While cognitive performance will be determined from performance on the word monitoring task and answering questions regarding context of an audiobook.
Based on preliminary results thus far there appears to be a trend of PD having larger variability between normal walking and dual-tasking trials, but similar walking speeds. While HE has had a lower variability shift but a larger change is walking speed