Motion analysis in dual-task on patients with mild dementias

Background: Most factors cause motor and gait impairment in patients with dementias are related to lesion of different areas and lobes. However, patients with different types of dementias may have distinct motor impairment features because of different neuropsychological dysfunction that may resulted in different motor features. Objective: To compared patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and patients with mild vascular dementia (VaD) in motion analysis of gait and hand function. Participants: The subjects were recruited into three groups: Group I.healthy elderly (HE),n=10; Group II. Mild possible Alzheimer’s disease (AD),n=10; Group III. Mild possible vascular dementia (VaD),n=10. This study was used Clinical Dementia Rating Scale(CDR) to diagnosis the dementia severity. The including criteria for dementia patient was CDR scale below 2 which means mild dementia. Design: In this study, motion analysis was used to evaluate the kinematic parameters to compare gait performance, hand function was measured by a new designed computer board. In gait aspect, there were three motor tasks: (1) comfortable walking;(2) comfortable walking combined dualtask;(3) comfortable walking combined dual-task (memory). In hand function evaluation, there were three motor task: (1) sequence task;(2) sequence task combined dual-task;(3) random sequence task. Dual-task in this study was asked subjects performance secondary task at the same time which invert three numbers experimenter recited. The data were been analysis through two-way mixed ANOVA to compare within and between groups. Result: There was no different motor ability in gait and hand function of AD group compared with VaD group in single- tasks. However, they were significant different represent in dual-task. Besides, AD group had more variation than VaD group in dual-task. Among them, the change of hand function seems more sensitive than gait in biomechanical analysis in dual-task. Conclusion: Patients with AD present poor motor strategies than VaD in dual-task of gait and hand function. Among them, the change of hand function seems more sensitive than gait in biomechanical analysis in dual-task.