Keywords
fatigue
Communicated by Francesco Lacquaniti.The ability to control balance and prevent falls while carrying out daily life activities may require a predominantly controlled (cognitive) or automatic processing depending on the balance challenge, age, or other factors. Consequently, this process may be affected by mental fatigue which has been shown to impair cognitive abilities. Controlling static balance in young adults is a relatively easy task that may proceed automatically with minimal cognitive input making it insusceptible to mental fatigue. To investigate this hypothesis, static single and dual task (while concurrently counting backward by seven) balance was assessed in 60 young adults (25.2 ± 2.4 years) before and after 45 min of Stroop task (mental fatigue condition) and watching documentary (control), presented in a randomized counterbalanced order on separate days. Moreover, because mental fatigue can occur due to task underload or overload, participants carried out two different Stroop tasks (i.e., all congruent, and mainly incongruent trials) on separate days in the mental fatigue condition. Results of the study revealed a significantly higher feeling of mental fatigue after the mental fatigue conditions compared to control (Open Access funding enabled and organized by CAUL and its Member Institutions