Effect of dual task-based training on motor and cognitive function in stroke patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trails.

After a stroke, rehabilitation often has to address both movement problems and thinking difficulties at the same time, and it's not fully settled whether training both together, known as dual-task training, actually helps more than working on them separately. This review pooled 30 randomized controlled trials involving 1,588 stroke patients to compare dual-task cognitive-motor training against single-task approaches such as cognitive-only training, exercise-only training, or usual rehabilitation. Overall, dual-task training was associated with improvements in walking performance, lower limb motor recovery, cognitive function, mental state, and daily living activities compared with the control approaches. Subgroup analysis suggested the benefit was more likely to appear after at least three weeks of training, though no improvement was found for basic mobility or gait speed specifically.

Because the review draws on a range of trial designs and interventions pooled together, and some outcomes showed no clear benefit, these findings should be read as a broad pattern rather than a settled, uniformly strong effect.

If you or someone you know is recovering from a stroke, you may have heard about combining physical and mental tasks during therapy, like walking while doing a memory task. This research looked at whether that kind of combined training works better than practicing movement and thinking skills separately, or better than standard rehab care. Pooling data from 30 trials and over 1,500 stroke patients, the researchers found that combined training was linked to better walking ability, better leg movement recovery, improved thinking skills, better overall mental state, and improved ability to manage daily activities, compared with other training approaches.

The benefit seemed more likely to show up after at least three weeks of training. However, it didn't show clear improvement in basic mobility or how fast people walked.

Because this is a summary of many different studies rather than one single large trial, and the training programs and comparison groups varied, the overall picture is encouraging but not a guarantee of how much any one person might benefit.

This is a summary of research, not medical advice. Talk to your own healthcare provider about anything affecting your care.

This meta-analysis speaks to a live clinical question: whether structured dual-task training, combining a motor and a cognitive demand, offers measurable advantages over single-task motor training, cognitive training, or usual rehabilitation for stroke survivors. The authors pooled 30 randomized controlled trials (n=1,588) and found statistically significant weighted mean differences favoring dual-task training for walking performance (WMD 3.19, 95% CI 2.26–4.12), lower limb motor function (WMD 2.78, 95% CI 1.38–4.18), cognitive function (WMD 2.93, 95% CI 0.95–4.91), mental state (WMD 3.39, 95% CI 0.06–6.72), and activities of daily living (WMD 7.47, 95% CI 3.97–10.96). Notably, no significant effects were found for basic mobility or gait speed, indicating the benefit is outcome-specific rather than global.

A subgroup finding that effects were more likely after at least three weeks of intervention is exploratory and should be treated as hypothesis-generating rather than a defined dosing threshold. The main limitation for applying this to practice is that the comparator category spans cognitive-only, exercise-only, and usual care, which differ substantially in attention and content, so the source of benefit (dual-task design itself versus simply more structured input) cannot be isolated from this synthesis. The abstract does not report risk-of-bias or heterogeneity statistics, limiting confidence in how consistent effects were across trials.