Raffaele Costanzo¹ (), Bianca Maria Di Bello¹, Luca Boccacci¹, Sveva Montesano³, Merve Aydin¹, Andrea Casella¹, Stefania Lucia¹, Francesca Strappini¹, Camilla Panacci², Francesco Di russo¹, Sabrina Pitzalis¹; ¹"Foro Italico" University of Rome, ²IRCCS Santa Lucia Foundation, ³University of Bologna, Italy

Some visual brain areas are prominently involved in the computation of the continuous visual changes induced by locomotion (flow-fields). Moreover, event-related potential (ERP) can be used to study brain functions such as motor readiness, associated with Bereinshaftpotential (BP), and cognitive control, associated with prefrontal negativity (pN). The study aims to verify whether cognitive and motor preparation can be influenced by the presence or absence of visual stimulation (flow-field) or concomitant locomotion. A visuomotor discriminative-response task (DRT) during electroencephalographic recordings was administered to 40 participants in two counterbalanced conditions: a Still and a Walking. The participants were divided into two equal groups. One group performed the conditions with a flow-field (FF) on the DRT stimuli background. The other group performed the conditions with a black background. A 2x2 mixed design was employed for statistical analyses with FF and Walking as factors. At the behavioral level, a significant positive main effect of Walking on both RT and accuracy was found. The main effect of FF was observed, improving the RT but reducing the accuracy. At the brain level locomotion significantly increased the BP and the pN, but the FF condition significantly increased the BP and reduced the pN. No interaction between conditions was observed. The study corroborates that locomotion may improve cognitive performance. The flow-field presence, likely interfering with the visual tasks, produces a sort of response-speed trade-off favoring speed at the cost of accuracy. At the brain level, a similar trade-off was detected in the condition with the flow-field facilitating motor readiness and suppressing cognitive/inhibitory control. The study showed that cognitive processing is modulated by locomotion. During not realistic walking, probably more neurocognitive resources are invested in the task for better performance. However, in realistic walking with the flow-field presentation, cognitive resources were less available still favoring speed but reducing accuracy.

Acknowledgements: This work was supported by the Italian Ministry of University and Research grant PRIN-2022_2022BK2NPS and grant PNRR MNESYS-J33C22002970002, both to Sabrina Pitzalis