There is a widespread misunderstanding that stance and gait are automatic processes, i.e. not controlled by the human brain. However, the fact that many patients with brain disorders are no longer able to walk and engage in simple conversation at the same time makes it abundantly clear that our consciousness and our thinking do indeed control such apparently simple actions.
This interaction between human movement and mental and cognitive processes will be the overriding topic at a congress that will be organized by the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre in Amsterdam in early February 2008.
Our knowledge of how the human brain controls gait has strongly increased over the past few years, partly thanks to research technology such as MRI, and research on gait and balance motor control and on diseases in which such control is absent, such as Parkinson’s disease and dementia. In early February 2008, the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre will organize a large international congress in the Okura Hotel in Amsterdam, where the most recent insights in this field will be presented from the perspectives of all the medical and other disciplines involved, including neurology, geriatrics, physiotherapy, psychiatry, rehabilitation medicine, physiology, human movement sciences, and medical psychology.
This interaction between gait and the brain appears to be a two-way process. On the one hand, the human brain checks and controls body movements, while, on the other hand, sports and sports-related physical activities can contribute to the recovery of damaged, ill-functioning nerve cells. Beneficial effects may even occur as a result of merely visualizing a particular movement in the mind. This was shown by research involving patients who had suffered a stroke and become paralysed. Imagined movement leads to better recovery. Moreover, there is also a connection between movement and dementia: the severity of dementia correlates with the amount of daily exercise patients take.