Motor-cognitive dual task performance: a multidimensional approach

• Applicant: Dr. Peter Bublak
• Subject Area: Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology ; Human Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience
• Term: from 2015 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 274922374

With increasing age, postural instability and risk to fall increase under dual task conditions. Working memory (WM) tasks are particularly demanding in this regard. Dual task interference between postural control and WM manipulation may result from the fact that the attentional focus has to be frequently and repeatedly switched, in a time-critical manner, between maintenance and processing operations in WM, and control operations for adjusting upright posture. Therefore, differences in processing speed but also the size of the attentional focus (short-term storage capacity) may represent critical limitations causing interference under dual task conditions.Four critical questions arise, which are addressed by the proposed project: (1) Do dual task costs depend on the demand on WM manipulation and how does this demand interact with the demand on postural control? (2) Is processing speed or the size of the attentional focus the crucially limiting factor in this regard? (3) What are the underlying brain mechanisms? (4) What are appropriate training strategies to enhance dual task performance?To reveal the neuro-cognitive mechanisms responsible for dual task interference, we vary the demand on WM manipulation and the demand on postural control, and compare the interactive effects of these variations between healthy young and elderly subjects. We relate these effects to quantitative estimates, based on a theory of visual attention (TVA), of the individual processing speed and short-term storage capacity. Applying fMRI, MEG, and EEG analyses, resting state and task related brain networks are investigated to reveal the cerebral dynamics underlying processing capacity and dual task interference. We are particularly interested in the influences that one functional brain network exerts over another and how this influence changes with the variation of the dual task costs. Assessment of patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and of patients with phobic vertigo will allow to compare the pathological effects of two types of central processing limitations: structural (in the case of MCI) versus strategic (in the case of phobic vertigo). A comparison of the cerebral connectivity patterns between both groups will provide information about the network basis of a possible structural bottleneck, limiting processing capacity, and of a potentially modifiable strategic bottleneck.Our proposal brings together movement science, cognitive psychology, brain imaging and clinical neurology in an interdisciplinary approach. The expected results will not only improve our understanding of the neuro-cognitive framework of human performance under motor-cognitive dual task requirements. They can also support the development and understanding of new preventive intervention strategies in postural instability and aging.

• DFG Programme: Priority Programmes
• Subproject of: SPP 1772: Human performance under multiple cognitive task requirements: From basic mechanisms to optimized task scheduling
• Co-Investigators: Professor Dr. Carsten Klingner; Professor Dr. Otto Wilhelm Witte