Grant for participation at a congress abroad: "Brain, Cognition and movements in MS: challenges for rehabilitation" - Tel-Aviv 27 to 29 October 2019 (R-10281)

Background: Detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) is a time-series analysis, to calculate gait-dynamics in healthy, elderly and neurological gait. Yet, gait-dynamics when interacting to music compared metronomes at different tempi in PwMS has not been reported. Methods: 28 PwMS and 29 HC were asked to walk to 6-different tempi in increments of 2% up to +10% to music and metronomes. DFA was applied to inter-step-interval time-series, and alpha was derived (the outcome of this analysis). Results: Significant differences were found between stimuli(F(1,564.6)=23.18,p<0.0001) and tempi(F(5,561.1)=6.14,p<0.0001), but not group, indicating that walking to music was more physiologically persistent compared to metronomes, and that persistency increased at the higher tempi. Alpha discriminated between the low and moderate motor impaired PwMS at the 10% tempi(F(5,561.1)=5.36,p<0.0001). Conclusion: Alpha, is a promising measure of biological gait dynamics in PwMS, differentiating motor impairment levels. In the context of auditory-motor-coupling, walking to music provides a natural physiological gait dynamics compared to metronomes.

Keywords:Neurological rehabilitation

Disciplines:Rehabilitation sciences not elsewhere classified