Depression is one of the most common disorders associated with aging. Depression has a high prevalence of symptoms related to social, physical, and neurophysio- logical factors.1 Cognition is a function that is altered in depression and has received increasing interest.2
Neurophysiological changes that occur in depressive states, such as prefrontal cortex and cingulate activation, are partly responsible for reduced attention, memory, and visuospatial capacities. Depression also affects executive processing, causing difficulties in planning strategies and mental flexibility, which, in turn, lead to impaired motivational and decision-making functions.2 Impaired cognition is thus
intimately associated with the severity of disease and the impairment of daily activities during and after a depressive crisis, including during remission.
In addition to the various treatments proposed for depression, physical exercise may have beneficial effects as an add-on therapy.3,4 However, activities that demand divided attention in daily life (e.g., walking) present an increased risk of falls and impaired cognition. Combined concurrent tasks (dual-task interventions) have been stu-
died in subjects with neuropsychiatric disorders and in normal subjects, although few data exist on depression in the elderly. Studies have produced divergent results regarding other variables such as age and the presence of motor or neuropsychiatric disorders.5-8
Some hypotheses and theories attempt to explain cogni- tive and motor performance for the dual-task paradigm. Dietrich proposed the transient hypofrontality hypothesis,9 which suggests that the cognitive functions associated with the frontal areas are impaired during physical exer- cise because the brain prioritizes motor control and the