There is limited evidence about gait stability and its alteration by concurrent motor and cognitive tasks in children with cerebral palsy (CP). We examined gait stability and how it is altered by constrained cognitive or motor task in CP and their typically developed (TD) controls.

Gait kinematics were recorded using inertial-measurement units (IMU) from 18 patients with hemiplegia (13.5±2.4 years), 12 with diplegia (13.0±2.1 years), and 31 TD controls (13.5±2.2 years) during unconstrained gait, and motor (carrying a tray) and cognitive (word naming) task constrained gait at preferred speed (∼400 steps/task). Step duration, its standard deviation and refined-compound-multiscale entropy (RCME) were computed independently for vertical and resultant horizontal accelerations.

Gait complexity was higher for patients with CP than TD in all tasks and directions (p<0.001–0.01), being pronounced in vertical direction, cognitive task and for diplegic patients (p<0.05–0.001). The gait complexity increased more (i.e. higher dual-task cost) from the unconstrained to the constrained gait in CP compared to TD (p<0.05). Step duration was similar in all groups (p>0.586), but its variation was higher in CP than TD (p<0.001–0.05), and during the constrained than unconstrained gait in all groups (p<0.01–0.001).

The gait in children with CP was more complex and the dual-task cost was higher primarily for children with diplegic CP than TD during cognitive task, indicating that attentional load hinders their gait more. This raises the hypothesis that more attention and cortical resources are needed to compensate for the impaired gait in children with CP.

关于脑瘫（CP）儿童的步态稳定性及其通过同时进行的运动和认知任务改变的证据有限。我们检查了步态稳定性以及CP及其典型发展（TD）控件中受限的认知或运动任务如何改变步态稳定性。

使用惯性测量单位（IMU）记录了18例偏瘫（13.5±2.4岁），12例截瘫（13.0±2.1岁）和31例TD对照（13.5±2.2岁）的步态运动学。 （携带托盘）和认知（单词命名）任务会以理想的速度（约400个步骤/任务）限制步态。对于垂直加速度和合成水平加速度，分别计算了步长，其标准偏差和精制复合多尺度熵（RCME）。

在所有任务和方向上，CP患者的步态复杂度均高于TD（p <0.001-0.01），在垂直方向，认知任务和双腿患者中明显（p <0.05-0.001）。与TD相比，CP的步态复杂度从不受约束的步态增加到受约束的步态增加更多（即更高的双重任务成本）（p <0.05）。所有组的步伐持续时间相似（p> 0.586），但CP的变化高于TD（p <0.001-0.05），并且在受限步态期间，所有组的步长变化均较未约束（p <0.01-0.001）。

CP儿童的步态更为复杂，在认知任务期间，双腿CP儿童的双重任务成本主要高于TD儿童，这表明注意力负荷更多地阻碍了他们的步态。这提出了这样的假设，即需要更多的注意力和皮质资源来补偿患有CP的儿童步态受损。