Abstract
Human dexterous motor control improves from childhood to adulthood, but little is known about the changes in cortico-cortical communication that support such ontogenetic refinement of motor skills. To investigate age-related differences in connectivity between cortical regions involved in dexterous control, we analyzed electroencephalographic data from 88 individuals (range 8-30 years) performing a visually guided precision grip task using dynamic causal modelling and parametric empirical Bayes. Our results demonstrate that bidirectional coupling in a canonical 'grasping network' is associated with precision grip performance across age groups. We further demonstrate greater backward coupling from higher-order to lower-order sensorimotor regions from late adolescence in addition to differential associations between connectivity strength in a premotor-prefrontal network and motor performance for different age groups. We interpret these findings as reflecting greater use of top-down and executive control processes with development. These results expand our understanding of the cortical mechanisms that support dexterous abilities through development.
Highlights
Human dexterous motor control improves from childhood to adulthood, but little is known about the changes in cortico-cortical communication that support such ontogenetic refinement of motor skills
We found that bidirectional effective connectivity between premotor and parietal regions was associated with precision grip performance across individuals
Effective coupling from PMv to inferior parietal lobule (IPL) was positively associated with performance, whereas connectivity strength from
Summary
Human dexterous motor control improves from childhood to adulthood, but little is known about the changes in cortico-cortical communication that support such ontogenetic refinement of motor skills. Movement-related modulation of oscillatory activity in primary sensorimotor regions was found to be lower in children compared to adults (Heinrichs-Graham et al, 2018; Trevarrow et al, 2019; Wilson et al, 2010) These studies provide important knowledge on age-related differences in motor control processes in core sensorimotor brain areas (Gaetz et al, 2010; Halder et al, 2007; Johnson et al, 2019; Trevarrow et al, 2019), but do not allow an assessment of the functional relevance of these differences to skilled motor control as they measure brain activity during the preparation and execution of simple motor tasks without a formal requirement for the quality of the motor output, e.g. precision or speed (Trevarrow et al, 2019; Wilson et al, 2010). The behavioral relevance of developmental changes in brain connectivity is not known due to the lack of studies relating task-related connectivity in sensorimotor networks to behavioral measures of motor performance
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