Sing for Your Saunter: Using Self-generated Rhythmic Cues to Enhance Gait in Parkinson's

Older adults, and particularly those with Parkinson disease (PD), may experience walking difficulties that negatively impact their daily function and quality of life. This project will examine the impact of music and mentally singing on walking performance, with a goal of understanding what types of rhythmic cues are most helpful. Our pilot work suggests that imagined, mental singing (i.e., singing in your head) while while walking helps people walk faster with greater stability, whereas walking to music also helps people walk faster but with reduced stability.

In Aim 1, the investigators will compare walking while mentally singing to walking while listening to music, using personalized cues tailored to each person's walking performance. The investigators hypothesize stride time variability will be less in the mental singing condition compared to listening to music; and that mental singing and listening to music will improve gait speed similarly as compared to the uncued condition. The investigators will also test whether finger tapping, a rhythmic task similar to walking in many ways, responds similarly while mentally singing and listening to music.

In Aim 2, the investigator will investigate the brain mechanisms underlying the enhancements in movement performance seen with mental signing or listening to music. The investigators will use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to measure brain activity during finger tapping with and without various cues to understand which areas of the brain are more or less responsive to the cues. The investigators hypothesize individuals with PD will exhibit lesser activation of putamen and greater activation of cortical motor areas and cerebellum compared to controls in all tapping conditions; and internal, mental singing during tapping will elicit greater activation of the putamen and lesser activation of cortical motor areas in both groups compared to uncued tapping and tapping while listening to music.