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Health science reports
By Azadian E, Majlesi M, Moghadam AA and 2 others.
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Gait impairment in Parkinson's disease (PD) is multifactorial and may become more pronounced under perceptual-cognitive challenge. Virtual reality (VR) provides an altered locomotor context, yet its effects on both conventional magnitude-based Center of pressure (CoP) metrics and higher-order structural organization remain unclear. This study compared linear, nonlinear, and topological characteristics of stance-phase CoP trajectories between individuals with PD and healthy older adults during normal and VR walking, with particular emphasis on whether VR elicited group-specific differences in topological organization.
Fifteen individuals with idiopathic PD and 17 age-matched controls performed overground walking under normal gait (NG) and VR conditions. Stance-phase CoP trajectories were analyzed using linear magnitude measures (path length, velocity, root mean square, ellipse area), sample entropy (SampEn), and persistent homology-derived persistence entropy (H0 and H1). Mixed-factor repeated-measures ANOVA models assessed Group and Task effects.
VR increased CoP path length (p = 0.005) and SampEn (p = 0.015) across groups, while H0 persistence entropy decreased (p = 0.002). H1 persistence entropy showed a significant Group × Task interaction (p = 0.025), with a between-group difference during VR but not normal walking. No Group × Task interactions were found for conventional CoP measures. Stance duration was longer in PD (p = 0.014).
The primary analysis showed a group-dependent H1 persistence-entropy response across normal and VR walking. However, because zero entropy represented both zero- and one-feature diagrams and robustness across alternative point-cloud densities and persistence thresholds was not examined, this finding should be considered exploratory. Conventional CoP measures did not show diagnosis-specific responses to VR. H1 persistence entropy may therefore provide complementary information about CoP trajectory organization, although its physiological and clinical significance requires further investigation.
Published in Health science reports. The abstract is shown as published and remains the work of its authors; read the full article at the source.
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