Investigation of the effects of cognitive tasks on balance performance in young adults

INTRODUCTION: Individuals routinely perform cognitive tasks concurrent to balance functions. The attention is one of the most important cognitive functions and it has effects on vestibular system. This study aims to investigate the connection between balance and cognitive tasks under different conditions. METHODS: Visual attention tasks (VAT) and auditory attention tasks (AAT) were given to 30 healthy adults (40.42 ± 11.22 years) during functional balance tasks. Sensory Organization Test (SOT) and Adaptation Test (ADT) were used for the evaluation of postural stability and adaptation. The sounds were presented from the computer speakers in AATs, and VATs were presented in the virtual reality (VR) environment. RESULTS: The first SOT condition had a statistically significant difference between all dual VAT (DT-VAT) and single task (ST) (p < 0.001), but there was no statistically significant difference between ST and DT-AAT (p = 1.00). In the fourth SOT condition, there was a statistically significant difference between all DT-VATs versus ST and DT-VA (p < 0.001); there was no statistically significant difference between ST and DT-AA scores (p = 0.80). While there was a significant difference between DT-VA and ST and DT-AA (p < 0.001), no statistically significant difference was observed between ST and DT-AA in the ADT (p = 0.321). CONCLUSIONS: Balance performance gets worse with VAT in a VR environment. VR technology can be used to effectively evaluate balance and cognitive performance. The use of experimental environments in standard postural evaluations increases the efficiency of the postural stability tests.