CLINICAL TRIAL article
Front. Neurol.
Sec. Applied Neuroimaging
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fneur.2025.1521687
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvanced fNIRS Applications in Neuroscience and Neurological DisordersView all 21 articles
Cortical activation changes in supratentorial stroke patients during posture-cognition dual task
Provisionally accepted
- 1Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China
- 2Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China
- 3Changzhou Dean Hospital, Changzhou, China
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Objective: To explore the effects of postural control and cognition interference on cortical activation during balance tasks in stroke patients.Methods: fNIRS was used to measure cortical activation in the SMC, PMC, and PFC in 30 subjects with supratentorial stroke while performing a postural single task (PST), cognitive single task (CST), and postural-cognitive dual task (DT). Differences in activation and correlations with patient balance or cognitive performance were analyzed. Results: CST induced a higher level of activation in the unaffected SMC and bilateral PMC compared to PST. While DT resulted in more activation of the bilateral SMC and bilateral PMC compared to PST. No difference was found between DT and CST. Correlation analysis showed that activation of ROIs during balance tasks showed a positive correlation with the balance ability and cognitive performance of subjects.Conclusions: Both postural control and cognitive interference led to cortical activation changes during the tasks. Cognitive load was more likely to elicit greater cortical activation and approach the activation ceiling. These activations were intimately related to the patient's ability to balance and cognitive performance. Subjects with better balance have a greater reserve of resources to allocate, enabling them to cope with tasks and improve task performance.
Keywords: Stroke, balance, Dual task, cortical activation, fNIRS
Received: 02 Nov 2024; Accepted: 26 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Zhu, He, Zhu, Geng, Kan, Xu, Guo and Wang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Chuan Guo, Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China
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