In a worldwide aging population with a high prevalence of motor and cognitive impairment, it is paramount to improve knowledge about underlying mechanisms of motor and cognitive function and their interplay in the aging processes.
We measured prefrontal cerebral blood flow (CBF) using functional diffuse correlation spectroscopy during motor and dual-task. We aimed to compare CBF changes among 49 older adults with and without mild cognitive impairment (MCI) during a dual-task paradigm (normal walk, 2- forward count walk, 3-backward count walk, obstacle negotiation, and heel tapping). Participants with MCI walked slower during the normal walk and obstacle negotiation compared to participants with normal cognition (NC), while gait speed during counting conditions was not different between the groups, therefore the dual-task cost was higher for participants with NC. We built a linear mixed effects model with CBF measures from the right and left prefrontal cortex.
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Our findings suggest a differential prefrontal hemodynamic pattern in older adults with MCI compared to their NC counterparts during the dual-task performance, possibly as a response to increasing attentional demand.