COMPARING THE EFFECT OF 8 WEEKS TRAINING MOTOR IMAGERY-WALKING AND OBSERVATION- WALKING ON RELEARNING OF WALKING SKILL IN PARKINSON’S DISEASE

Parkinson’s disease after Alzheimer is the second most common neurological
disorder and one of the most important motor effects of this disease, which is seen in its final stages, is
walking disorder. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of motor imagerywalking and observation-walking on relearning walking skill in Parkinson’s disease.
Materials & Methods: This study was a quasi-experimental study with a pre and post-test design and a
control group. The participants were a number of 30 Parkinson’s disease patients (2-3 Hohn and Yahr
scale) who were selected through convenience sampling and were randomly assigned into experimental
and control groups. The Experimental group had passed a training program (8 weeks and 3 sessions in
each week, each session prolonged 60 min) and practiced motor imagery of walking, observation of
walking and walking skill. The Tinetti Gait Scale (TGS) were used to collect data before and after the
training program on gait scores. In order to verify the normal distribution of data, Shapiro-Wilk test was
used; and Levene's test was conducted to test if the samples have equal variances. Then the data were
examined by analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) and Bonferoni post hoc test at the significance level of
(p ≤ 0.05).
Results: The results showed that there was a significant difference between the experimental groups and
control group in the gait scores (p=0.01, f=5.46) and in the post-test gait scores difference between
control group and observation-walking group with (p=0.01) was significant but gait scores difference
between motor imagery-walking group and observation-walking group and gait scores difference
between control group and motor imagery-walking group was not significant.
Conclusion: It can be concluded that training with observation-walking can be an appropriate method
to help relearning walking skill in Parkinson’s disease. It seems that patients along with drug therapy
use these exercises to improve your walking pattern