A execução de tarefas simultâneas em portadores de doença de Alzheimer

Abstract

The main goal of this study is to analyse the dual-task (DT) performance of people with Alzheimer‟s disease (AD) and to accurately assess whether the AD patient‟s capacity is affected by the types of combined tasks and corresponding loads. More specifically, the aim is to assess whether the execution of a motor task concurrently with a cognitive task results in different performance levels than the execution of two simultaneous motor tasks. An analysis of the patient‟s response patterns is conducted, taking into account the possible existence of compensatory strategies. In the study, gait is the permanent task to which secondary tasks are added. This approach is selected due to the fact that it corresponds to a common daily challenge that AD patients face. The results, as predicted, show that the DT performance is worse than the single-task performance and that the load of the proposed challenges affects the performance of the concurrent tasks as well as the performance of each single task executed separately. Results also suggest that patients present a higher level of impairment when carrying out a combination of two motor tasks as compared with the combination of two dissimilar tasks (one motor and one cognitive). In other words, the response to a motor task executed concurrently to a walking task is poorer than the response to a cognitive task performed simultaneously to locomotion. It is also important to highlight the fact that during the dual-task tests, the locomotion task presented higher impairments than the secondary tasks, which contradicts the hypothesis of „posture first‟ proposed by some early DT studies. This may suggest that AD patients are exposed to an increased risk of falling or other types of postural control impairments

Date of Award	2011
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Alexandre Castro Caldas (Supervisor) & Maria Vânia Silva Nunes (Co-Supervisor)