Investigating cognitive-motor effects during slacklining using mobile EEG

Balancing is a very important skill, supporting many daily life activities. Cognitive-motor interference (CMI) dual-tasking paradigms have been established to identify the cognitive load of complex natural motor tasks, such as running and cycling. Here we used wireless, smartphone-recorded electroencephalography (EEG) and motion sensors while participants were either standing on firm ground or on a slackline, either performing an auditory oddball task (dual-task condition) or no task simultaneously (single-task condition). We expected a reduced amplitude and increased latency of the P3 event-related potential (ERP) component to target sounds for the complex balancing compared to the standing on ground condition, and a further decrease in the dual-task compared to the single-task balancing condition. Further, we expected greater postural sway during slacklining while performing the concurrent auditory attention task. Twenty young, experienced slackliners performed an auditory oddball task, silently counting rare target tones presented in a series of frequently occurring standard tones. Results revealed similar P3 topographies and morphologies during both movement conditions. Contrary to our predictions we observed neither significantly reduced P3 amplitudes, nor significantly increased latencies during slacklining. Unexpectedly, we found greater postural sway during slacklining with no additional task compared to dual-tasking. Further, we found a significant correlation between the participant's skill level and P3 latency, but not between skill level and P3 amplitude or postural sway. This pattern of results indicates an interference effect for less skilled individuals, whereas individuals with a high skill level may have shown a facilitation effect. Our study adds to the growing field of research demonstrating that ERPs obtained in uncontrolled, daily-life situations can provide meaningful results. We argue that the individual CMI effects on the P3 ERP reflects how demanding the balancing task is for untrained individuals, which draws on limited resources that are otherwise available for auditory attention processing. In future work, the analysis of concurrently recorded motion-sensor signals will help to identify the cognitive demands of motor tasks executed in natural, uncontrolled environments.