Just like a detective solving a mystery, scientists are using fancy gadgets to investigate the inner workings of the brain. In this study, researchers wanted to understand how brain function changes in people with cognitive impairment. They recruited a group of older adults and divided them into those who were cognitively healthy and those who were impaired. By using a functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) device and gait analysis devices, they collected data while the participants walked under different conditions: walking only, dual-task walking-easy, and dual-task walking-difficult. The results showed that there were no significant differences in brain connectivity and gait performance between the cognitively healthy and impaired groups during single-task walking. However, when it came to the dual-task walking experiments, the impaired group showed greater difficulties compared to the healthy group. These findings suggest that assessing brain function during dual-task walking could be helpful in diagnosing cognitive impairment. This research opens up exciting possibilities for developing new methods for identifying cognitive impairment early on!

BackgroundEarly detection of mild cognitive impairment is crucial in the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). This study aims to explore the changes in gait and brain co-functional connectivity between cognitively healthy and cognitively impaired groups under dual-task walking through the functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and gait analysis devices.MethodThis study used fNIRS device and gait analysis devices to collect the data of 54 older adults. According to the Mini-mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) scales, the older adults were cognitively healthy (control group) and cognitively impaired (experimental group), of which 38 were in the control group and 16 were in the experimental group. The experiment was divided into a total of three sets of task experiments: a walking-only experiment, a dual-task walking-easy (DTW-easy) experiment, and a dual-task walking-difficult (DTW-difficult) experiment.Main ResultFor the cognitively impaired and cognitively healthy populations, there were no significant differences in overall functional connectivity, region of interest (ROI) connection strength, and gait performance during single-task walking between the two groups.Whereas the performances of DTW differed significantly from the single-task walking in terms of between-group variability of functional connectivity strength change values, and ROI connection strength change values in relation to the dual-task cost of gait. Finally, the cognitively impaired group was significantly more affected by DTW-difficult tasks than the cognitively healthy group.ConclusionThis study provides a new approach to assist in the diagnosis of people with cognitive impairment and provides a new research pathway for the identification of cognitive impairment.

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