Cognitive-motor interference during goal-directed upper-limb movements,NEURAS-IMA: cognitive-motor interference,

Data was collected within the NEURAS project (protocol registered as NL48497.058.14), aimed to separately assess the functioning of systems involved in motor control (i.e., motor, sensory, cognitive) and their functional integration in various contexts (i.e., using different tasks and systematic manipulations of the mechanical/visual environment) in order to understand how these factors contribute to activity limitations in two highly prevalent neurological disorders (Parkinson’s disease and stroke). Within this project, among others, the possibilities of ‘markerless’ movement tracking (MT) devices (based on KinectTM) were explored to relate unobtrusively assessed characteristics of motor performance to contributing motor, (sensory,) and cognitive factors. In this study, we evaluated cognitive-motor interference during an upper-limb motor task. We used the cognitive auditory Stroop task (Cohen and Martin, 1975). The motor task involved goal-directed upper-limb movements to control a virtual mouse, presented on a LED TV, to collect virtual pieces of cheese (targets) as fast as possible while avoiding a virtual cat (obstacle). Single-task performances as well as dual-task effects (DTEs) in both the cognitive and motor domain were evaluated. Patterns of CMI were explored to evaluate overall attentional capacity and attention allocation.