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Abstract
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BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The purpose was to determine whether balance and mobility training (BMT) or balance and mobility plus cognitive training (BMT+C) would reduce postural sway and reaction time (RT) and maintain these improvements after a 12-week follow-up in healthy older adults.
METHODS: Participants were allocated to the BMT (n=15; age: 70.2±3.2), BMT+C (n=14; age:68.7±5.5), or control group (n=13; age: 66.7±4.2). The BMT group trained one-on-one, 3×/wk for 12 weeks on a balance obstacle course. The BMT+C group trained one-on-one, 3×/week for 12 weeks on a balance obstacle course while completing cognitive tasks. Participants stood on a force plate for 30s in feet-apart (FA) and semi-tandem (ST) positions while completing simple RT and choice RT tasks at baseline, at the 12-week post-training, and at the 12-week follow-up. Participants were instructed to stand as still as possible while verbally responding as fast as possible to the auditory cues.
RESULTS: No group differences in center of pressure (COP) Area, COP Velocity, or Sample Entropy of the COP displacement were shown after the training or 12-week follow-up, but the BMT and BMT+C showed faster RT after training and maintained these improvements at the 12-week follow-up compared to the control group. No differences in postural sway or RT emerged between the BMT and BMT+C groups.
CONCLUSION: Both training groups improved RT after the interventions and sustained these improvements over 12 weeks, but showed no reductions in postural sway. Multi-task balance training likely results in reduced attention demand.
Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Language: en |