Effects of Parkinson’s Disease and a Secondary Cognitive Task on Reactive Balance

Patients with Parkinson's disease have been seen to be prone to falling. Balance problems and postural instability have been seen to affect their quality of life. This project aims to understand the relationship between the presence of cognitive loads and reactive stepping performance in Parkinson’s patients. Additionally, it also tests the feasibility of the experimental framework to evaluate reactive stepping performance. This experiment tested Parkinson’s patients performing tasks of varying difficulty levels while having to regain their balance. Acceleration perturbations on a treadmill were used to elicit an intrinsic response in the subjects. This compared gait parameters of the subjects that performed single and dual tasks. The results showed that the presence of a cognitive task had a negative effect on the reactive stepping performance, specifically on the margin of stability and step length. Additionally, there was no effect of changing the difficulty level of the task on reactive stepping performance.