BACKGROUND Several studies have reported the potential value of the dual-task concept during locomotion in clinical evaluation because cognitive decline is strongly associated with gait abnormalities. However, current dual-task tests appear to be insufficient for early diagnosis of cognitive impairment. METHODS Forty-nine subjects (young, old, with or without mild cognitive impairment) underw...

Gait impairments are prevalent among people with Parkinson's disease (PD). Instructions to focus on walking can improve walking in PD, but the use of such a cognitive strategy may be limited under dual-task walking conditions, when walking is performed simultaneously with concurrent cognitive or motor tasks. This study examined how dual-task performance of walking and a concurrent cognitive tas...

Some studies suggest that dual-task processing impairs sequence learning; others suggest it does not. The reason for this discrepancy remains obscure. It may have to do with the dual-task procedure often used. Many dual-task sequence learning studies pair the serial reaction time (SRT) task with a tone-counting secondary task. The tone-counting task, however, is not ideal for studying the cogni...

Walking is an automated rythmic motor behavior that is mostly controlled by subcortical brain regions. Automaticity implies that gait can be performed without attention. However, recent works highlight the involvement of attentional resources in gait, using a "dual-task" methodology in which performance on attention-demanding tasks such as spoken verbal response and walking is compared when the...

Why is the human brain fundamentally limited when attempting to execute two tasks at the same time or in close succession? Two classical paradigms, psychological refractory period (PRP) and task switching, have independently approached this issue, making significant advances in our understanding of the architecture of cognition. Yet, there is an apparent contradiction between the conclusions de...