Sports Scienes

Vita

Nele Christin Lemke - Sportwissenschaftlerin, M.A.

Bethanien-Krankenhaus, Geriatrisches Zentrum
Rohrbacher Str. 149
D-69126 Heidelberg

Phone: +49 (0)6221 319 1783
lemke@nar.uni-heidelberg.de

Fellows: PD Dr. Klaus Hauer, Prof. Dr. Peter Oster

Validation of a dual-task measurement method for patients with mild to moderate dementia

The earliest symptoms of dementia, along with amnesia, are impairments of divided attention, measured as dual-task performance. Deficits in dual-task performance show a rapid decline in the course of the disease. These deficits are closely related to motor dysfunctions such as falls. They may be the missing link to increased risk of falling observed for people with dementia (PwD).

Therefore, the benefits of the integration of a specific dual-task training into existing rehabilitation programs is obvious. However, high-quality studies investigating the effects of such specific trainings in the context of geriatric patients with dementia are rare. This is partly due to a lack of valid measurement methods.

The group of geriatric research at the Bethanien-Hospital, Heidelberg, could evidence that motor-cognitive training affects the dual-task performance in PwD in particular training situations. The objective of this ongoing dissertation is a contribution to the development of assessment methods for an objective and valid recording of dual-task activities (motor-cognitive tasks) for geriatric persons with mild to moderate dementia. Within this study, different methods to record the dual-task performance will be evaluated. Besides the validity, the re-test-reliability and the feasibility of the methods will be examined. This Ph.D. thesis is part of a randomized controlled trial at the Heidelberg University.

Vita