Clinical trial NCT04137952: Short-term Postural Training for Older Adults
Official title: The Use of Neuro-cognitive Strategies to Power Generalization Effect After Short-term Postural Training for Older Adults
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Aging
Balance
Keywords: Posture training, Motor generalization, Aging, Cognition, High-density electroencephalography
Lead sponsor: National Cheng-Kung University Hospital
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan
First posted: 2019-10-24
Enrollment: 150
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 60
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: yes
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: BASIC_SCIENCE

Brief summary: Generalization refers to skill transfer under various working spaces following motor practice. The extent of generalization effect links causal to in-depth recognition of error properties during motor practice. Idiom says "imperfect practice makes perfect". It could be beneficial for the elderly to gain superior capacity of balance transfer skill under the short-term productive failure learning environments. In contrast to traditional visual feedback that uses error avoidance training to optimize target balance task, the present 3-year proposal is to propose three potential neuro-cognitive strategies to improve motor skill transfer following stabilometer training. The strategies are expected to enhance opportunities of error experience and motor exploration via modified visual feedback, underlying facilitations of attentional resource and error-related neural networks. In the first year, the neuro-cognitive strategy for balance practice is progressive augmentation of visual error size to improve balance skill transfer. In the second year, the neuro-cognitive strategy for balance practice is visual feedback with virtual uncertainness of motor goal. In the third year, the neuro-cognitive strategy for balance practice is stroboscopic vision. EEG and central of pressure will be processed with non-linear approaches. Graph theory will characterize EEG functional connectivity and brain network efficiency regarding to brain mechanisms for practice-related leaning transfer. Trajectories of central of pressure will be analyzed with stabilogram diffusion analysis to reveal behavior mechanisms for practice-related variations in feedback and feedforward process for error corrections.


Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Age above 60 years old healthy older adults without a history of falls.
* Able to understand and give informed consent.
* The Mini-Mental State Examination test score above 25-30.
* Lower limb muscle strength is evaluated as G grade
* The corrected visual acuity was within the normal range.

Exclusion Criteria:

* Any known history of mental illness
* Any neuromuscular or degenerative neurological disease(ex:stroke、SCI、TBI...etc)
* Any known history of cerebral cerebellar disease or intracranial metal implants.
* Weak of hearing or wearing a hearing aid

Primary outcomes:
measure: EEG graph analysis
timeFrame: through study completion, an average of 1 year
Secondary outcomes:
measure: stabilogram diffusion analysis of central of pressure
timeFrame: through study completion, an average of 1 year
measure: root mean sqaure error of stabilometer
timeFrame: through study completion, an average of 1 year
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Taian
country: Taiwan
facility: National Chen Kong University Hospital
state: Eastern District
Study officials:
affiliation: NCKU, Institute of Allied Health Sciences
name: Hwang Ing-Shiou, Phd
role: STUDY_CHAIR
References: