The Effect of Walking on Auditory Localization, Visual Discrimination, and Aurally Aided Visual Search.

Objective: The present study was designed to examine the impact that walking has on performance in auditory localization, visual discrimination, and aurally aided visual search tasks.

Background: Auditory localization and visual search are critical skills that are frequently conducted by moving observers, but most laboratory studies of these tasks have been conducted on stationary listeners who were either seated or standing during stimulus presentation.

Method: Thirty participants completed three different tasks while either standing still or while walking at a comfortable self-selected pace on a treadmill: (1) an auditory localization task, where they identified the perceived location of a target sound; (2) a visual discrimination task, where they identified a visual target presented at a known location directly in front of the listener; and (3) an aurally aided visual search task, where they identified a visual target that was presented in the presence of multiple visual distracters either in isolation or in conjunction with a spatially colocated auditory cue.

The Effects of Blast-Related Neurotrauma on Aurally Aided Visual Search While Standing and Walking.

Service members (SMs) who have suffered mild traumatic brain injury due to blast exposure (b/TBI) often report post-concussive symptoms consistent with auditory, visual, or vestibular impairments even when they score within the normal range on traditional clinical tests of sensory function. One possible explanation for this discrepancy is that patients who score in the low normal range in more than one sensory modality may be severely impaired in tasks that require multisensory integration. This study evaluated unimodal and multimodal sensory performance in SMs with b/TBI and healthy controls by having them conduct four tasks while walking or standing in an immersive virtual environment: an Auditory Localization task (AL) where they moved a cursor to the perceived location of a sound; a Visual Discrimination task (VD) where they distinguished between two visual targets; an Aurally-Aided Visual Search Task (AAVS) where they used an auditory cue to locate and identify a visual target hidden in a field of visual distractors; and a Visual-Only Visual Search task (VOVS) where they located and identified a visual target in a field of distractors with no auditory cue.

Mental Health Care Disparities Now and in the Future.

In 2014, the USA spent $3 trillion dollars in health care the most per capita in the world. However, the USA lacks universal health coverage, and lags behind other highly developed and wealthy countries in life expectancy (even some "non wealthy" countries have better outcomes). The USA also has deficits in other health outcome measures.