Crossing Virtual Doors: A New Method to Study Gait Impairments and Freezing of Gait in Parkinson's Disease

Parkinson's Disease
Luis I Gómez-JordanaCathy M Craig

Abstract

Studying freezing of gait (FOG) in the lab has proven problematic. This has primarily been due to the difficulty in designing experimental setups that maintain high levels of ecological validity whilst also permitting sufficient levels of experimental control. To help overcome these challenges, we have developed a virtual reality (VR) environment with virtual doorways, a situation known to illicit FOG in real life. To examine the validity of this VR environment, an experiment was conducted, and the results were compared to a previous "real-world" experiment. A group of healthy controls (N = 10) and a group of idiopathic Parkinson disease (PD) patients without any FOG episodes (N = 6) and with a history of freezing (PD-f, N = 4) walked under three different virtual conditions (no door, narrow doorway (100% of shoulder width) and standard doorway (125% of shoulder width)). The results were similar to those obtained in the real-world setting. Virtual doorways reduced step length and velocity while increasing general gait variability. The PD-f group always walked slower, with a smaller step length, and showed the largest increases in gait variability. The narrow doorway induced FOG in 66% of the trials, while the standard doorway c...Continue Reading

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Citations

Sep 12, 2019·Frontiers in Neurology·Erich Talamoni FonoffClement Hamani
Mar 14, 2021·Neurological Sciences : Official Journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology·Wenjing SongGuiyun Cui

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