Abstract
Anticipatory motor planning abilities mature as children grow older, develop throughout childhood and are likely to be stable till the late sixties. In the seventh decade of life, motor planning performance dramatically declines, with anticipatory motor planning abilities falling to levels of those exhibited by children. At present, the processes enabling successful anticipatory motor planning in general, as do the cognitive processes mediating these age-related changes, remain elusive. Thus, the aim of the present study was (a) to identify cognitive and motor functions that are most affected by normal aging and (b) to elucidate key (cognitive and motor) factors that are critical for successful motor planning performance in young (n = 40, mean age = 23.1 ± 2.6 years) and older adults (n = 37, mean age = 73.5 ± 7.1 years). Results indicate that normal aging is associated with a marked decline in all aspects of cognitive and motor functioning tested. However, age-related declines were more apparent for fine motor dexterity, processing speed and cognitive flexibility. Furthermore, up to 64% of the variance in motor planning performance across age groups could be explained by the cognitive functions processing speed, response planning and cognitive flexibility. It can be postulated that anticipatory motor planning abilities are strongly influenced by cognitive control processes, which seem to be key mechanisms to compensate for age-related decline. These findings support the general therapeutic and preventive value of cognitive-motor training programs to reduce adverse effects associated with high age.
Highlights
A characteristic of successful motor performance is the ability to plan and execute movements in such a fashion that everyday tasks can be accomplished
Forty independent community-dwelling older adults were recruited for this study, three of which withdrew from participation before any testing
We separated the older adults in young-olds (61–70 years, n = 15) and old-olds (71 years and older, n = 22) as done in our previous work (Wunsch et al, 2017) and ran a mixed-factor Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) with Condition as within-subjects factor and Age Group as the between-subjects factor
Summary
A characteristic of successful motor performance is the ability to plan and execute movements in such a fashion that everyday tasks can be accomplished. Most everyday life activities (e.g., grasping, walking, driving a car, etc.) rely on a person’s ability to appropriately plan movements prior to their initiation thereby considering situational constraints and future actions. There is strong evidence that the hand postures used to grasp objects are sensitive to future actions and task goals (cf Rosenbaum et al, 2014). In their original study, Rosenbaum et al (1990) asked participants to grasp a horizontally positioned bar and place it in a
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