Original title: Quantitative analysis of posture and gait in the differential diagnosis of functional and organic motor disorders: a multicenter cross-sectional study
The study compares people with functional motor disorders, people with organic motor disorders, and healthy controls. Researchers measure balance and walking while people focus on one task or handle a second task, and with their eyes open or closed. The functional-disorder group has more balance problems, more variation in the time between steps, and an opposite response to divided attention. Their motor performance is also linked with anxiety, depression, and fatigue.
Imagine carrying a full cup while walking through a busy room. Keeping your steps steady gets harder when you also have to answer someone or when you cannot see clearly. In this paper, the cup-carrying challenge stands for walking and balancing, while the extra demand or reduced vision stands for the different test conditions; comparing how people respond may help distinguish kinds of movement disorders.
Doctors can find it hard to distinguish functional motor disorders from disorders linked to identifiable structural abnormalities. Measuring balance and walking under different conditions may offer objective clues to support that distinction, which matters for people seeking an accurate diagnosis.
This cross-sectional study shows group differences and associations, not that psychological factors cause motor changes. The abstract does not report how accurately the proposed measures classify individual patients or whether they improve clinical diagnosis in practice.
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Quantitative analysis of posture and gait in the differential diagnosis of functional and organic motor disorders: a multicenter cross-sectional study — Michela Russo, Roberto Erro, Carlo Ricciardi et al. — Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology — doi:10.3389/fbioe.2026.1872332
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.