Age-related changes in the bimanual advantage and in brain oscillatory activity during tapping movements suggest a decline in processing sensory reafference

Abstract

UM tapping in the young, but not in the elderly group. This result indicates that in self-paced tapping, the bimanual advantage is absent in elderly. Electrophysiological results revealed an interaction between tapping condition and age group on low beta band (14-20 Hz) activity. Beta activity varied depending on the tapping condition in the elderly but not in the young group. Source estimations localized this effect within left superior parietal and left occipital areas. We interpret our results in terms of engagement of different mechanisms in the elderly depending on the tapping mode: a 'kinesthetic' mechanism for UM and a 'visual imagery' mechanism for BM tapping movement.

Age-related changes in the interference between cognitive task components and concurrent sensorimotor coordination

“…In the case of fine motor CSCs, research shows age-related decline in performance in a range of tasks (Skoura et al, 2005), including bimanual tracking (Serbruyns, et al, 2015;van Ruitenbeek et al, 2017), finger tapping (Bangert, et al, 2010;Fling et al, 2012;Sallard et al, 2014), pointer tracing (Bock, 2005;Shetty et al, 2014), and the Purdue Pegboard task (Serbruyns, et al, 2015). In tracking tasks, however, O tend to show similar performance to Y (Bangert et al, 2010;Hocherman et al, 2004;Summers et al, 2010), with an age-related deficit emerging only at higher speeds (Riviere and Thakor, 1996).…”

Investigating Different Levels of Bimanual Interaction With a Novel Motor Learning Task: A Behavioural and Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation Study

“…Our results demonstrate that participants improved in both movement time and error, i.e., they learned the novel task, in the absence of a speed-accuracy trade-off. Learning-induced improvements in performance have been found previously in bimanual finger tapping (Shammi et al, 1998;Bangert et al, 2010;Takeuchi et al, 2012;Sallard et al, 2014;Koppelmans et al, 2015;Loehrer et al, 2016;Kajal et al, 2017) and more complex tasks (Preilowski, 1972;Fagard et al, 1985;Mueller et al, 2009;Sisti et al, 2011;Doost et al, 2017). Both estimates, i.e., movement time and error, can therefore be used independently to quantify bimanual motor learning in the novel task.…”

“…Although many daily life tasks require skilled bimanual interactions, our understanding of their behavioural and neurophysiological underpinnings is still sparse ( Kelso et al, 1979 ; Swinnen, 2002 ; Swinnen and Gooijers, 2015 ). Bimanual interactions are mainly studied using simple finger tapping, sequence tapping and the simultaneous or alternating flexion/extension of individual fingers ( Shammi et al, 1998 ; Bangert et al, 2010 ; Takeuchi et al, 2012 ; Sallard et al, 2014 ; Koppelmans et al, 2015 ; Loehrer et al, 2016 ; Kajal et al, 2017 ). These studies have advanced our understanding of which regions are involved in bimanual interaction and how they communicate with each other (see for review Swinnen, 2002 ; Swinnen and Gooijers, 2015 ), but the largely artificial tasks used remain distant to daily life and often do not require learning.…”

Steady-state evoked potentials distinguish brain mechanisms of self-paced versus synchronization finger tapping

“…Once we obtained the FFTA power spectra of each electrode for both SMS versus LO and SMS versus SP comparisons, the data went through a standardization procedure adapted from the method of Nozaradan et al (2011). Assuming that, in the absence of an SSEP at a given frequency bin, the power of the neighboring frequency bins are similar, we divided for each electrode the frequency power at each frequency bin by the mean of the four neighboring bin values of the global power spectra (GPS, i.e., the average across all electrodes of the frequency power absolute values; Sallard, Spierer, Ludwig, Deiber, & Barral, 2014), such as:…”

“…Even though EEG source estimation has been applied successfully in various clinical and fundamental studies (e.g. Britz, Landis, & Michel, 2009;Corrigan et al, 2009;De Pretto, Rochat, & Spierer, 2017;Geukes et al, 2013;James, Britz, Vuilleumier, Hauert, & Michel, 2008;James et al, 2012;James, Oechslin, Michel, & De Pretto, 2017;Rihs et al, 2013;Sallard et al, 2014), such method only guarantees a 1-2 cm spatial accuracy (Martuzzi et al, 2009;Plomp, Michel, & Herzog, 2010).…”