TY - JOUR PY - 2016// TI - Balance and mobility training with or without concurrent cognitive training does not improve posture, but improves reaction time in healthy older adults JO - Gait and posture A1 - Jehu, Deborah A1 - Paquet, Nicole A1 - Lajoie, Yves SP - 227 EP - 232 VL - 52 IS - N2 - 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

LA - en SN - 0966-6362 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gaitpost.2016.12.006 ID - ref1 ER -