Older Age Relates to Worsening of Fine Motor Skills: A Population-Based Study of Middle-Aged and Elderly Persons

Abstract

Introduction: In a population-based study of 1,912 community-dwelling persons of 45 years and older, we investigated the relation between age and fine motor skills using the Archimedes spiral-drawing test. Also, we studied the effect of brain volume on fine motor skills.Methods: Participants were required to trace a template of a spiral on an electronic drawing board. Clinical scores from this test were obtained by visual assessment of the drawings. Quantitative measures were objectively determined from the recorded data of the drawings. As tremor is known to occur increasingly with advancing age, we also rated drawings to assess presence of tremor.Results: We found presence of a tremor in 1.3% of the drawings. In the group without tremor, we found that older age was related to worse fine motor skills. Additionally, participants over the age of 75 showed increasing deviations from the template when drawing the spiral. Larger cerebral volume and smaller white matter lesion volume were related to better spiral-drawing performance, whereas cerebellar volume was not related to spiral-drawing performance.Conclusion: Older age is related to worse fine motor skills, which can be captured by clinical scoring or quantitative measures of the Archimedes spiral-drawing test. Persons with a tremor performed worse on almost all measures of the spiral-drawing test. Furthermore, larger cerebral volume is related to better fine motor skills.

Cerebellar gray and white matter volume and their relation with age and manual motor performance in healthy older adults

“…Up until now, most studies that related cerebellar volume to manual motor performance have been conducted in patient populations [Allin et al, ; Dennis et al, ; Horská et al, ; Richter et al, ] and not in large samples of the general or healthy elderly population. The two studies that did combine cerebellar volumetrics and manual motor performance data either had a much smaller sample size than the current study [Bernard and Seidler, ], or only investigated one test of fine motor performance [Hoogendam et al, ]. The unique combination of cerebellar volumetry and multiple measures of manual motor performance in a relatively large sample of healthy older adults provides new insights in the association between cerebellar tissue class volume and manual motor performance.…”

“…The few studies that have examined cerebellar gray and white matter volume almost exclusively looked at the association between volume and age [Hoogendam et al, ; Jernigan et al, ; Walhovd et al, ], cognition [Hogan et al, ], or differences in tissue class volume between healthy control subjects and patients with cerebellar disorders [de Zeeuw et al, ; Dennis et al, ; Hong et al, ; Keuthen et al, ; Sullivan et al, ]. To date, only three studies have looked at the association between cerebellar gray matter volume and motor performance [Bernard and Seidler, ; Hoogendam et al, ; Nadkarni et al, ]. These studies ‐that investigated different populations with different sets of motor tasks‐ have not provided conclusive evidence on the association of cerebellar gray and white matter volume on motor performance.…”

“…These studies ‐that investigated different populations with different sets of motor tasks‐ have not provided conclusive evidence on the association of cerebellar gray and white matter volume on motor performance. Two of these studies reported relationships between cerebellar gray matter volume, manual sensorimotor functioning [Bernard and Seidler, ], and gait speed [Nadkarni et al, ], while the third did not observe associations between measures of fine motor performance required to draw an Archimedes spiral and either cerebellar gray or white matter volume [Hoogendam et al, ]. Except for the latter, no studies have investigated how cerebellar white matter volume is associated with motor functioning, although associations have been reported on cerebellar white matter microstructural integrity and motor coordination [Roberts et al, ] and motor learning [Della‐Maggiore et al, ].…”

Orbital Exenteration: a series of cases

“…It is known that the elderly presented over time a worsening of fine motor coordination, and therefore they are a group that can benefit the most from the facial support devices. (10) Sakiyalak et al (11) conducted a prospective, cross-linked and randomized study comparing the proportion of successful self-instillation of eye drops in patients with glaucoma who used or not a facial support device. The device was named "Thai Eye Drop Guide" (patent 6555, Mahidol University, 9/2/ 2011).…”

The Effect of Physical and Cognitive Decline at Older Ages on Job Mismatch and Retirement

“…The second measure is termed "fine motor problems" and it aims to capture problems with the precise coordination of fingers, such as picking up small objects or buttoning a shirt (Hoogendam et al 2014). Our measure sums three items from the HRS about reporting difficulties with:…”