The Association between Prefrontal Cortex Activity and Turning Behavior in People with and without Freezing of Gait

Publication date: Available online 19 July 2019Source: NeuroscienceAuthor(s): Valeria Belluscio, Samuel Stuart, Elena Bergamini, Giuseppe Vannozzi, Martina ManciniAbstractTurning elicits Freezing of Gait (FoG) episodes in people with Parkinson's disease (PD) and is thought to require higher cortical control compared to straight ahead gait. Functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) has been used to examine prefrontal cortex (PFC) activity while walking, but the relationship between PFC activity and turn performance remains unclear. The aim of this pilot study was to examine PFC activity during turning in PD and healthy controls, and to investigate the association between PFC activity and turning.Thirty-two subjects, 15 freezers (PD + FoG) and 17 non-freezers (PD-FoG), and 8 controls were asked to perform a 2-min turning-in-place test under single-task (ST) and dual-task (DT) conditions. Each participant wore a fNIRS system to measure changes in oxyhemoglobin, as measure of PFC activity, and inertial sensors to quantify turning.Our results show a significant group (p = .050), task (p = .039), and interaction (p = .047) for the PFC activity during turning. Specifically, PD + FoG show higher PFC during turning compared to the other groups, PFC activity during DT is overall different compared to ST with an opposite trend in PD + FoG compared to controls and PD-FoG. In addition, higher PFC is associated with worse FoG in PD + FoG (r = 0.57, p =...
Source: Neuroscience - Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research