Sidewalks that elderly brain is activated in walking

2014 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24656353
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Town planning/Architectural planning
• Research Institution: Nippon Institute of Technology
• Principal Investigator: SETO Mayumi 日本工業大学, 工学部, 教授 (20550891)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): HAYASHI Yuko 北海道科学大学, 保健医療学部, 教授 (40336409)
• Research Collaborator: HARA Motohiko
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2015-03-31
• Keywords: 高齢者 / 活動 / 歩道 / 歩行面 / 脳波 / 発現数 / 変化率 / 脳活性化

Outline of Final Research Achievements

From the expression situation of the electroencephalographic alpha wave and beta wave when I paid my attention to the hardness of the aspect of the sidewalk and the softness in this study, and adult man and woman walked the different walk side of the hardness, I observed a change of the brain activity every generation and checked hardness of the sidewalk which let you activate the brain of the elderly person. The experiment problem decided to walk by random choice on a floor of two kinds of sponges different in the thickness, Styrofoam and vinyl chloride. And a walk side of a thick sponge influenced brain activity and I was older than 60 years old and knew that there was the most influence. From these results, it was suggested that the sidewalk having a tender mask might let you activate the brain of the elderly person than the sidewalk which had a hard mask.

Free Research Field

福祉環境工学