Cortical changes induced by increased cognitive task difficulty during dual task balancing correlate with postural instability in elders and patients with Parkinson's disease.

Objective. The flexibility of cognitive resource allocation is deteriorated due to aging and neurological degenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's disease (PD). Dual task performance reflects a subject's ability to allocate cognitive resources, and the investigation of cortical activation changes during dual tasking can provide a deep insight into the reallocation of neural resources. However, the cortical changes induced by increased cognitive task difficulty during dual tasking with changes in behavioral outcomes have not been explored in PD and older adults (OAs).Approach.We designed a novel dual task paradigm comprising of balance maintenance and visual working memory (VWM) task to assess cognitive-motor interaction. Nineteen early-stage PD, 13 age-matched OA and 15 young adults completed 4 blocks of 25 trials each for two VWM difficulty levels (2 squares and 4 squares). Behavioral performance, postural stability, and 32-channel EEG were recorded. One-way ANOVA was used to examine group and task effects while Spearman's correlation analysis assessed associations between EEG changes and behavioral performance.Main results.Both PD and OA groups exhibited significantly longer reaction time, reduced postural stability, prolonged P300 latency and less alpha event related desynchronization (ERD) enhancement in response to the increased VWM task difficulty. Moreover, PD patients demonstrated significantly alpha ERD reduction at FC3, C3 and P4 in the 500-700 ms compared to the OAs. The ERD changes at the central and parietal regions were found to be significantly related to postural stability and clinical scores, respectively.Significance.The results provide novel evidence that cortical EEG responses during dual tasking may reflect deficits in attention resource reallocation and reduced cognitive flexibility in PD and OA groups. These observed cortical changes with increasing cognitive task difficulty are correlated with postural instability, highlighting their potential as neurophysiological biomarkers for dual-task dysfunction.