Brain Activity Changes During Walking Affected by Cueing in Parkinson's Disease Patients Viewed by sLORETA Imaging
Abstract
Parkinson's Disease is the second most common neurodegenerative disease, with an increasing incidence around the world. An essential part of treatment of this disease is in addition to pharmacological and surgical treatment also medical rehabilitation and especially physiotherapy.
Cueing is highly recommended physiotherapeutic intervention for gait improvement in patients with Parkinson's Disease, whose positive effect is generally known. But only a few studies devoted to mechanism of the effect of this therapy.
The aim of this study is to acertain changes in electrical activity of the brain between gait affected by visual and auditory cueing and normal comfortable gait in patients with Parkinson's disease. Group: 11 patients (4 women, 7 men), aged between 60-78 years, with Parkinson's Disease diagnose.
Methods: The electrical activity of the brain was registred by scalp EEG. The experiment consisted of 4 parts - I.
EEG with closed and then opened eyes, II. EEG during normal comfortable gait (3 minutes), III-IV.
EEG during walking affected by cueing (3 + 3 minutes). The order of visual and auditory cueing was randomized.
Visual cueing was mediated by white lines stuck to the floor within 50 centimetres of each other. Auditory cueing was mediated by a metronome.
The basic rhythm of the metronome was set on the 70 BPM. Next, the data from the experiment were transferred into the sLORETA program.
For the evaluation of statistically significant changes in the brain activity, a pairwise t-test was used. Afterwards statistical signifficant changes were viewed in 3D Talairach imaging.
Results: A statistically significant difference in the brain activity was revealed between gait affected by visual cueing and normal gait in the Brodmann's areas 9,10 and 32 in the beta-3 frequency band at the significance level p <= 0,05. Between gait affected by auditory cueing and normal gait there was no statistically significant brain activity change.