Assisted Cycle Therapy (ACT) improves motor and cognitive function in adolescents with down syndrome

Abstract

Current physical activity guidelines for persons with Down syndrome (DS) are often non-specific in terms of the type or intensity of exercise and results on motor and cognitive functioning are limited. The main purpose of the study was to investigate the impact of Assisted Cycling Therapy (ACT) on motor and cognitive functions in adolescents with DS. A secondary purpose was to examine if music would increase rate of movement equivalent to the Assisted Cycle Therapy and also produce improvements in motor and cognitive functions. There were 9 adolescents with DS that completed four different interventions: voluntary exercise (VE), voluntary exercise with music (VEM), assisted exercise (AE) and music listening (MO). The results showed that manual dexterity as measured by the Purdue Pegboard test improved only after AE. The assembly subtest only improved after VEM and MO suggesting that music may enhance spatial-temporal ability. More importantly, our results showed improvements in the speed of information processing as assessed by reaction time and cognitive planning as assessed by the Tower of London, only after the Assisted exercise intervention. Thus, our results of improved cognitive function after Assisted exercisein persons with DS are consistent with improved executive function as demonstrated by activation of the prefrontal cortex as was found after Assisted exercise in Parkinson's patients (Alberts et al., 2011). Even though the exact mechanisms are still unknown, the implication of our results showed that ACT can improve motor and cognitive functions in persons with DS, even after a single exercise session.

Acknowledgments: This research was funded by the College of Nursing and Health Innovation at Arizona State University.