Study Status: Recruiting
Recruit Status: Recruiting
Study Type: Interventional
Official Title: Home-based Motor Imagery Intervention for the Improvement of Gait Stability in Elderly Persons. A Cross-over Feasibility Study.
Brief Summary:
Gait stability is reduced as early as from age 40 to 50. Gait stability can be improved in patients with neurological diseases or in healthy elderly persons with exercises.
There is evidence that mental practice, also called motor imagery, the imagination of performing a movement, can also improve an activity or balance. The effective performance and the imagination of a task activates some overlapping central areas and neural networks, which might explain the improvements after motor imagery.
The investigators set out to test the feasibility of such a study using an open label randomized cross-over trial including 32 persons aged 40 years or more. The primary aim is to evaluate whether the instructions are clear, the intervention and the study procedures are acceptable and to assess the proportion of participants withdraw from the study (drop outs). Secondary aims are the assessment of between group differences in the changes of the gait stability.