Motor Dual-Tasks for Gait Analysis and Evaluation in Post-Stroke Patients

The design of this experimental tasks facilitated a in-depth discussion of motor control function of stroke patients which provides new ideas for clinical diagnosis and evaluation of the gait function of stroke patients. Through dual-motor working tasks and the calculation of dual-task gait cost values, this research protocol aims to provide a basis for the clinical diagnosis of gait function and the in-depth study of motor control in stroke patients. Demonstrating the procedure will be Doctor Shijuan Lang and graduate student Biyi Zhao and Yongchun Jiang from my laboratory.

To begin, recruit stroke patients and obtain written informed consent from all patients before beginning the study. Record the patient's demographic characteristics including name, gender, date of birth, level of education, chief complaint, current medical history, past history, medical treatment, and current medications. Then ask the patient to complete the mini mental state examination in Montreal Cognitive Assessment.

Next, conduct a 10 meter walk test by asking the patient to perform three consecutive trials at a self-selected pace for safety, comfort, and higher speed, respectively. Record the time taken to walk to the middle six meters in each trial. Next, conduct the timed Up and Go"test by asking the patient to perform three consecutive trials at a self-selected pace for safety and comfort.

Before performing the 3D Gait Analysis, inform the patient about the precautions and the purpose of the experiment. Then, record the values of various anthropometric indicators including height, weight, bilateral width of the ankle joints, bilateral knee diameter, pelvic width, bilateral pelvic depth, and bilateral leg length. Next place, twenty-two markers on key points of the patient with three markers on the trunk, three markers on the pelvis, six markers on the thigh six markers on the calf, and four markers on the foot.

Instruct the patient to maintain an upright position on the force plate for at least three to five seconds to gather the baseline data. Then, ask the patient to walk on the walking pass for five trials at a self-selected comfortable speed, which is marked as Task 0"Consider the single walking task as the baseline task. Next, ask the patient to walk while holding a bottle of water on the walking pass for five trials at a self-selected, comfortable speed.

and mark this as Task 1"Finally, ask the patient to walk across the line in the middle of the walking pass for five trials at a self-selected comfortable speed and mark this as Task 2"The demographic characteristics of 18 patients recruited in this study with hemiplegia after stroke are shown here for the original data of Simple Motor dual-task, called Task 1"and Complex Motor dual-Task, called Task 2"there was no statistical difference in the spatiotemporal parameters. However, in the joint angle parameters, the bilateral trunk rotation and the bilateral pelvic rotation in the transversal plane were significantly larger in Task 2 than in Task 1. For the DTC values of Gait dual tasks, the bilateral trunk obliquity in the frontal plane and the bilateral pelvic rotation in the transversal plane were higher in Task 2 than in Task 1.

At the same time, the right cadence in the right GPS were significantly increased in Task 2, relative to that in Task 1. In this study, in addition to the single walking task as the baseline, we mainly focus on comparing two dual tasks of motor performance and walking, including the task of water holding and the task of coursing obstacles. This study aimed explore the effect of dual modal task on the gait of stroke patients and employ DTC values of dual modal parameters to accrue the heterogeneity among stroke patients.

This results suggest that DTC values have an advantage in assessing dual task gait in stroke patients.