Cognitive Motor Interference: a Meta-analysis on Healthy Subjects

Growing literature on cognitive-motor dual-task has highlighted the occurrence of an interference, specifically defined as cognitive motor interference (CMI). By considering the important implications in everyday life and clinical practice of such phenomenon, we decided to perform a meta-analysis integrating the most recent discoveries on CMI in healthy individuals. The following aims led our investigation to: a) study CMI on gait and cognitive performances; b) study the impact of different cognitive tasks on dual-task gait performance; c) study how age-related effects modulate dual-task performance. A total of 49 studies presenting cognitive-motor dual-task paradigms were considered in the present work. We conducted 4 separate analyses to investigate the CMI effect on spatial, temporal, spatio-temporal gait measures, and cognitive performance. The results confirmed the presence of an overall effect of CMI on gait performance. However, it was not possible to detect a consistent CMI effect on cognitive performance. As to task-related effects, subgroup analyses showed significant results for temporal and spatio-temporal gait measures. Conversely, subgroup analyses investigating age-related effects did not entail any significant result. Such inconsistent findings were probably influenced by the high heterogeneity of the measures and tasks employed. Therefore, future research should promote more standardized paradigms to assess CMI and its modulating factors in both healthy and clinical populations with the aim of developing targeted interventions.