Kinematic and neuromuscular characterization of cognitive involvement in gait control in healthy young adults

The signature of cognitive involvement in gait control has rarely been studied using both kinematic and neuromuscular features. The present study aimed to address this gap. Twenty-four healthy young adults walked on an instrumented treadmill in a virtual environment under two optic flow conditions: normal (NOF) and perturbed (POF, continuous mediolateral pseudorandom oscillations). Each condition was performed under single-task and dual-task conditions of increasing difficulty (1-, 2-, 3-back). Subjective mental workload (raw NASA-TLX), cognitive performance (mean reaction time and d-prime), kinematic (steadiness, variability and complexity in the mediolateral and anteroposterior directions) and neuromuscular (duration and variability of motor primitives) control of gait were assessed. The cognitive performance and the number and composition of motor modules were unaffected by simultaneous walking, regardless of the optic flow condition. Kinematic and neuromuscular variability was great..., Subjects:

Healthy young adults, kinematic data: N = 24, 12 men and 12 women, age = 21.67 +/- 2.28 years old.
Healthy young adults, EMG data: N = 20, 10 men and 10 women, age = 21.80 +/- 2.42 years old.

The testing session was composed of three blocks performed in a randomised order: (1) three N-back tasks in a seated position (single-task cognitive performance, STC), (2) walking under normal (congruent) optic flow (NOF), and (3) walking under perturbed (continuous mediolateral pseudo-random oscillations) optic flow (POF). In the latter two blocks, the walking tasks were performed under both single-task (STW) and dual-task (DTW) conditions (i.e. walking while performing the N-back tasks). Participants were asked to walk naturally while looking straight ahead. The treadmill speed was adjusted to their preferred walking speed. The blocks (2) and (3) began and ended with a STW condition while the three DTW conditions were performed in a randomized order between the two STW conditions (Sch..., The dataset is composed of 5 files as follows:

1 text file (README_All-files.txt) which contains information about the database and how the files are organized;
1 Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet (Cognition_All-participants.xlsx) which contains the results of the N-back task for each experimental condition; 
1 Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet (RAW-NASA-TLX_All-participants.xlsx) which contains the results of the NASA-TLX questionnaire on perceived cognitive load for each experimental condition;
1 Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet (Gait_All-participants.xlsx) which contains the results of the kinematic and electromyography analysis for each experimental condition; 
1 zip file (Gait-parameters.zip) which contains:

1 text file (README_Gait-parameters.txt) which contains information about the gait parameters available in each of the 24 *.csv files;
24 comma-separated value files (P01 to P24.csv) which contain the kinematic and EMG time series for each experimental condition.

Excel..., # Kinematic and neuromuscular characterization of cognitive involvement in gait control in healthy young adults

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.bnzs7h4ds](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.bnzs7h4ds)

## Description of the data and file structure

Subjects:

* Healthy young adults, kinematic data: N = 24, 12 men and 12 women, age = 21.67 +/- 2.28 years old.
* Healthy young adults, EMG data: N = 20, 10 men and 10 women, age = 21.80 +/- 2.42 years old.

The testing session was composed of three blocks performed in a randomised order: (1) three N-back tasks in a seated position (single-task cognitive performance, STC), (2) walking under normal (congruent) optic flow (NOF), and (3) walking under perturbed (continuous mediolateral pseudo-random oscillations) optic flow (POF). In the latter two blocks, the walking tasks were performed under both single-task (STW) and dual-task (DTW) conditions (i.e. walking while performing the N-back tasks). Participants were asked to walk naturally while lookin...