Thames Valley Brain Injury Forum Summer 2024 (Hybrid) Meeting

Dear Friends & Colleagues

TVABIF continues its hybrid meetings - join us in person at RWK Goodman Solicitors, Botley, Oxford (spaces limited, book early) or online. Attendance is free but registration is essential via eventbrite.

Speaker & Presentation:

Dr Johnny Collett:

Johnny is research lead for the Department of Sport, Health Sciences and Social Work and leads the rehabilitation theme with MOReS, OxInAHR, Oxford Brookes University. He has considerable experience in rehabilitation research with a focus on neurological conditions. His interests span from understanding mechanism to pragmatic delivery of interventions. He has specific interests in optimising movement, exercise and physical activity. His work is motivated by enabling people to participate in activities meaningful to them.

Presentation:

Is there a link between pendulums and going shopping?

Humans are one of the few species to utilise bipedal walking and it is unique amongst primates in using upright walking as the primary means of ambulation. While, bipedal walking is complex and inherently unstable, it is a highly evolved behaviour and typically developing individuals become proficient in early childhood. This approach to walking enables us to use our hands during locomotion and travel long distances efficiently. The cyclic pattern of walking allows energy to be conserved which can be explained using pendulum mechanics. Optimum efficiency is largely dependent on walking speed which may also be fundamental to walking control. Walking is a highly automatic process that is driven by inputs produced by the rhythmic stepping of walking. The automatic control frees up executive resources to navigate the environment and perform other cognitive tasks such as holding a conversation or planning one’s day. Indeed walking in the community requires attention to complex, busy, and changing surroundings, and after brain injury, people often struggle to walk in such situations. To improve this ability interventions have incorporated dual-task walking training, whereby an additional cognitive task is performed during the walking practice. However, the clinical significance and the extent this transfers to improved participation in walking in the community is unclear. We hypothesised sufficient walking speed may be required to drive automatic processes to ‘free-up’ executive resources to attend to additional tasks. Using data from a trial of an intervention to improve dual-task walking after stroke, we compared response to training in those with ‘good’ and ‘limited’ walking capacity before the trial. We found that while walking performance improved in both groups only the ‘good’ walker group improved dual-task walking ability. These findings were consistent with our imaging data that indicated walking required greater conscious control in the ‘limited’ walking group and increased connectivity between brain areas in the ‘good’ walking group that has been associated with navigating the surroundings. However, we did not find any improvement in community walking outcomes, and multicomponent interventions beyond just capability are likely required to address, what remains, a major challenge for rehabilitation.

Schedule:

1pm Log-in

1:05 pm Regional Updates & Networking

1:20pm Presentation

2:15pm Discussion & Reflections

Host or Publisher NeuroFlow