Effects of cognitive tasks on center-of-foot pressure displacements and brain activity during single leg stance: comparison in community-dwelling healthy older and young people.
Kentaro Sasaki, Takafumi Ooi, Ayako Yokota and 4 others
PMID 35291478WHAT IT FOUND
Adding a recall task to single-leg stance increased foot pressure sway in healthy older adults, but not in young adults.
Brain activity did not change with any task. The recall task was not superior to single-leg stance alone for fall risk screening.
Key findings
01In older adults, the total length of center-of-foot pressure displacement was significantly longer during the recall task than during the single-task condition.
02Brain activity in the prefrontal cortex, measured by oxygenated hemoglobin, did not differ among the four standing tasks in either age group.
03The study could not determine if single-leg stance with a recall task is better than single-leg stance alone for screening fall risk.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
All older participants were healthy, independent, and free of sarcopenia, so findings may not apply to frail older adults. The 35-second duration may have been too short to detect changes in brain activity. Near-infrared spectroscopy could not confirm exactly which brain areas were being measured. Measurements were taken on only one leg, so differences between dominant and non-dominant legs were not examined.
Declared interests
The study was supported by a JSPS KAKENHI grant. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that adding a recall task to single-leg stance makes it a superior fall risk screening tool. The authors explicitly state they could not determine if it was better than single-leg stance alone, and the participants were all healthy and independent.