When walking in our natural environment, we often solve additional cognitive tasks. This increases the demand of resources needed for both the cognitive and motor systems, resulting in Cognitive-Motor Interference (CMI). A large portion of neurophysiological investigations on CMI took place in static settings, emphasizing the experimental rigor but overshadowing the ecological validity. As a more ecologically valid alternative to treadmill and desktop-based setups to investigate CMI, we developed a dual-task walking scenario in virtual reality (VR) combined with Mobile Brain/Body Imaging (MoBI). We aimed at investigating how brain dynamics are modulated by dual-task overground walking with an additional task in the visual domain. Participants performed a visual discrimination task in VR while standing (single-task) and walking overground (dual-task). Even though walking had no impact on the performance in the visual discrimination task, a P3 amplitude reduction along with changes in power spectral densities (PSDs) were observed for discriminating visual stimuli during dual-task walking. These results reflect an impact of walking on the parallel processing of visual stimuli even when the cognitive task is particularly easy. This standardized and easy to modify VR paradigm helps to systematically study CMI, allowing researchers to control for the impact of additional task complexity of tasks in different sensory modalities. Future investigations implementing an improved virtual design with more challenging cognitive and motor tasks will have to investigate the roles of both cognition and motion, allowing for a better understanding of the functional architecture of attention reallocation between cognitive and motor systems during active behavior.

中文翻译：

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双任务地上行走期间大脑动力学的改变

在自然环境中行走时，我们经常解决额外的认知任务。这增加了认知和运动系统所需资源的需求，导致认知运动干扰 (CMI)。大部分关于 CMI 的神经生理学研究是在静态环境中进行的，强调实验的严谨性，但掩盖了生态有效性。作为一种更生态有效的替代跑步机和基于桌面的设置来研究 CMI，我们在虚拟现实 (VR) 结合移动脑/身体成像 (MoBI) 中开发了双任务步行场景。我们旨在研究如何通过双任务地上行走以及视觉域中的附加任务来调节大脑动力学。参与者在站立（单任务）和地上行走（双任务）时在 VR 中执行视觉辨别任务。尽管步行对视觉辨别任务的表现没有影响，但观察到 P3 幅度减小以及功率谱密度 (PSD) 的变化，用于在双任务行走期间辨别视觉刺激。这些结果反映了步行对视觉刺激并行处理的影响，即使认知任务特别容易。这种标准化且易于修改的 VR 范式有助于系统地研究 CMI，使研究人员能够控制不同感官模式中任务的额外任务复杂性的影响。