Improving Walking Automaticity in Parkinson's Disease: Levodopa or Donepezil
Status:
Completed
Trial end date:
2019-07-30
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Safe and independent mobility at home and in the community requires control of walking while
accomplishing other functional tasks. A hallmark of healthy control of walking is
automaticity, defined as the ability of the nervous system to successfully coordinate
movement with minimal use of attention-demanding executive resources [1]. Recent evidence
indicates that walking disorders are often characterized by a shift in the locomotor control
strategy from healthy automaticity to compensatory executive control. This shift is
potentially detrimental to walking performance as an executive control strategy is not
optimized for locomotor control and it places excessive demands on a limited pool of
cognitive reserve.
Here, the investigators hypothesize that walking automaticity, as measured by the prefrontal
cortex activity while walking, will be improved by donepezil (a cholinesterase inhibitor).