Key result
Increasing cognitive-inhibitory load from 1-back to 2-back Go/NoGo during walking was not associated with detectable costs in response accuracy or speed, but resulted in widespread attenuations in walking-related EEG amplitude changes.
Why the study?
The neural mechanisms underlying increased cognitive load while walking remain not fully understood.
Does increasing cognitive load affect neural activity, gait kinematics, and task performance during walking in young adults?
Observational (n=61)
No
Does increasing cognitive load affect neural activity, gait kinematics, and task performance during walking in young adults?
Maintaining task performance under increased cognitive load while walking requires widespread reallocation of neural resources in young adults.
Answers are grounded in this paper and cite their sources.
Neural mechanisms of dual-task walking remain incompletely mapped; hypothesis-generating for MoBI applications in cognition research.
The neural underpinnings of increasing cognitive load during walking, despite being ubiquitous in everyday life, is still not fully understood. This study elucidates the neural mechanisms underlying increased cognitive load while walking, by employing 2 versions of a Go/NoGo response inhibition task, namely the 1-back Go/NoGo task and the more cognitively demanding 2-back Go/NoGo task, during sitting or walking on a treadmill. By using the Mobile Brain/Body Imaging (MoBI) modality, electroencephalographic (EEG) activity, three-dimensional (3D) gait kinematics and task-related behavioral responses were collected from 34 young adults for the 1-back Go/NoGo task and 34 young adults for the 2-back Go/NoGo task. Interestingly, increasing cognitive-inhibitory load from 1-back to 2-back Go/NoGo during walking was not associated with any detectable costs in response accuracy, response speed, or gait consistency; however, it came with attenuations in walking-related EEG amplitude changes during both successful inhibitions (correct rejections) and successful executions (hits) of the ‘Go’ motor response. During correct rejections, such attenuations were detected over frontal regions, during latencies related to sensory gain control, conflict monitoring and working memory storage and processing. During hits, attenuations were found over left-parietal regions, during latencies related to orienting attention to and selecting the ‘Go’ motor plan, as well as over central regions, during latencies linked to executing the ‘Go’ motor response. The pattern of attenuation in walking-related EEG amplitude changes, manifested by the 2-back Go/NoGo group, is thought to reflect more effortful recalibration of the above neural processes, a mechanism which might be a key driver of performance maintenance in the face of increased cognitive demands while walking. Overall, the present findings shed light on the extent of the neurocognitive capacity of young adults, thus revealing the employed methodology as promising for better understanding how factors such as aging or neurological disorders could impinge on this capacity.
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Patelaki et al. (2023) conducted an observational in Healthy (n=61). 2-back Go/NoGo task while walking (increased cognitive load) vs. 1-back Go/NoGo task while walking was evaluated on Dual-task-related response accuracy change (walking-minus-sitting d' score) (r = -0.04, p=0.7762). Increasing cognitive-inhibitory load from 1-back to 2-back Go/NoGo during walking was not associated with detectable costs in response accuracy or speed, but resulted in widespread attenuations in walking-related EEG amplitude changes.
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