Critical decline in fine motor hand movements in human aging

Smith, Charles D.; Umberger, Gloria; Manning, Edward; Slevin, John T.; Wekstein, David R.; Schmitt, Frederick A.; Markesbery, William R.; Zhang, Z.; Gerhardt, Greg A.; Gash, Don M.

doi:10.1212/wnl.53.7.1458

Cited by 221 publications

(174 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…For instance, age-related declines in the speed of processing of visual stimuli in simple perception tasks have been reported in the literature [2]. In addition, a progressive slowing of arm movement speed according to task complexity has also been observed for older compared to young adults [22,44]. Finally, during aging, a decline in several aspects of proprioceptive sensitivity occurs [48] which certainly influences movement control.…”

Section: Overt Movement Executionmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…Is this ability function of the kind and difficulty of motor task being imagined? It is well known that normal aging influences cognitive functions [2,13,24,40,41] and sensorimotor control of actions [22,43,44]. The state of musculoskeletal system, in particular that of muscular mechanics and structure, is also modified [17,23,26,32,46,47,49].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mentally represented motor actions in normal agingI. Age effects on the temporal features of overt and covert execution of actions

Skoura

Papaxanthis

Vinter

et al. 2005

Behavioural Brain Research

105

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The present study examines the temporal features of overt and covert actions as a function of normal aging. In the first experiment, we tested three motor tasks (walking, sit-stand-sit, arm pointing) that did not imply any particular spatiotemporal constraints, and we compared the duration of their overt and covert execution in three different groups of age (mean ages: 22.5, 66.2 and 73.4 years). We found that the ability of generating motor images did not differentiate elderly subjects from young subjects. Precisely, regarding overt and covert durations, subjects presented similarities for the walking and pointing tasks and dissimilarities for the stand-sit-stand task. Furthermore, the timing variability of imagined movements was always greater compared to actual movements and was of the same amount in the three groups of age. In the second experiment, we investigated the effect of age (three groups with mean ages: 22, 64.8 and 73.2 years) upon temporal characteristics of covert and overt movements involving strong spatiotemporal constraints (speed/accuracy trade-off paradigm). During overt execution young and elderly subjects respected Fitts's law despite the fact that movement speed progressively decreased with age. Thus, while execution is deteriorated, the motor preparation process is still intact in old age, and follows well-known laws of biological motions. For covert execution, movement speed progressively decreased with age but elderly subjects did not respect Fitts's law. This suggests that the generation and control of motor intentions that consciously do not come to execution, particularly those concerning complex motor actions are progressively perturbed in the aging brain.

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Section: Overt Movement Executionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mentally represented motor actions in normal agingI. Age effects on the temporal features of overt and covert execution of actions

Skoura

Papaxanthis

Vinter

et al. 2005

Behavioural Brain Research

105

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Some measures exhibit monotonic changes as a function of age, such as reductions in processing speed inferred from behavioral measures [6,58] and latency of certain brain potentials (P300) [21,27,46]. Other measures accelerate with increasing age, such as various tests of fluid intelligence [34], fine motor control [61] and possibly white matter integrity [44] cf. [1,64].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Event-related potentials accompanying motor preparation and stimulus expectancy in the young, young-old and oldest-old

Golob

Ovasapyan

Starr

2005

Neurobiology of Aging

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Although aging is accompanied by neurobiological changes and increased susceptibility to many neurological disorders, little is known about neurophysiological changes that start in old age. Here, neurophysiological changes during old age were assessed by recording brain potentials associated with motor preparation and stimulus expectancy (contingent negative variation, CNV) in young-old (60-69), oldest-old (85-98), and young (17-23) subjects. Individual trials began by a button press, followed 2.5 s later by either a low or high pitch tone. In the "motor" condition subjects responded following high pitch tones (P = 0.20); in the "non-motor" condition subjects did not respond. Motor condition CNV amplitudes in the oldest old were more positive than the young and young-old groups, which were similar. In the non-motor condition, the young-old and oldest-old had similar CNV amplitudes that were positive in polarity, and were significantly different from young subjects. Motor potentials before button presses that started the trials were comparable among groups. Results show that neural activity associated with motor preparation and stimulus expectancy changes during advanced age, and that group differences can be modulated by task requirements.

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“…Based on the results, gender had a slight effect on the hand performance, but in some parts of the test, women performed better and faster than men [50]. On the other hand, in a study by Smith et al (1999), which was about the slight hand movement of the elderly, the results showed no difference between both the genders [51]. In another study, the mean score of PPT for senior men was 8.20, and for women, it was 3.20, which was the opposite of the findings of this study [52].…”

Section: Physical Trea Mentsmentioning

confidence: 92%

The Relationship Between Demographic, Health, Physical Fitness and Socioeconomic Determinants and Functional Performance of Elderly People

Rostami

nezhad

Moghaddam

et al. 2016

PTJ

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Purpose: Increased life expectancy leads to an increase in the elderly population. However, with an increase in the age, the number of chronic diseases and cognitive disorders also increases. Since the social, cultural, environmental, lifestyle and health-related behavior is specific to each nation, the present study aimed at investigating the relationship between socio-economic status, health, physical fitness, and cognitive function in older adults with functional performance in Iran.Methods: It is a cross-sectional study involving 42 older adults (20 women, 22 men) through a survey questionnaire and accessible sampling method. The age range of the study participants was 60 to 91 years. The questionnaire was used by the examiner to collect information on the age, height and weight, history of diseases, health status, physical fitness, and socio-economic status, for assessing the functional performance of older adults. The three performed tests included Sit-toStand test to examine the strength and lower extremity function, the Timed Up and Go (TUG) test to measure the speed and balance while walking and the Purdue Pegboard Test (PPT) for measuring the hand function. A step-wise regression model analysis was applied by using SPSS (version 19). Results:In sit-to-stand test, the test of significance of regression coefficients was profound in case of dependent variables (marital status (P=0.003) and overweight (P=0.014)). In TUG test, the dependent variables, age (P=0.002), marital status (P=0.081), and cognitive function (P=0.048) were influential on the TUG performance. In PPT, the independent variables, age (P=0.041), gender (P=0.012), marital status (P=0.058), and cognitive function (P=0.001), had a significant effect on the hand function. Conclusion:Age-related changes, cognitive functions, and socioeconomic status were the most important factors affecting the functional performance of the elderly. Weight and gender also affected some aspects of functional performance. The author further recommends controlling and preventing loss of cognitive function and improving the social status and age-related changes in the older Iranian adults.

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Critical decline in fine motor hand movements in human aging

Abstract: This technique sensitively detects age-related motor performance decline in humans. There may be a critical period in late midlife when fine motor performance decline either begins or abruptly worsens.

Cited by 221 publications

References 11 publications

Mentally represented motor actions in normal agingI. Age effects on the temporal features of overt and covert execution of actions

Mentally represented motor actions in normal agingI. Age effects on the temporal features of overt and covert execution of actions

Event-related potentials accompanying motor preparation and stimulus expectancy in the young, young-old and oldest-old

The Relationship Between Demographic, Health, Physical Fitness and Socioeconomic Determinants and Functional Performance of Elderly People

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