Lucian John-Ross Bezuidenhout

The overarching purpose of this project is to clinically assess motor cognitive performance during complex walking and dual-tasking conditions by integrating a non-invasive measure of brain activity i.e. fNIRS and objective assessments of motor behavior in people post stroke. The goals of this project are to 1) validate complex walking protocols developed previously for people with neurological diseases for evaluating motor-cognitive performance and assessing brain activity using fNIRS in individual’s post-stroke. 2) investigate differences in cortical activity with walking performance during complex walking tasks and compare it to healthy adults, people with Parkinson’s disease and multiple sclerosis

3) establish correlations between fNIRS-derived cortical activity and walking performance metrics (i.e., gait speed and stride length) to gain insight into the relationship between brain activity, cognitive performance, disease severity and functional outcomes in people post stroke.