Abstract
Increased attentional demand has been shown to reduce motor performance, leading to increases in accidents, particularly in elderly populations. While these deficits have been well documented behaviorally, their cortical correlates are less well known. Increased attention has been shown to affect activity in prefrontal regions of the cortex. However there have been varying results within past research investigating corticomotor regions, mediating motor performance. This mini-review initially discusses past behavioral research, before moving to studies investigating corticomotor areas in response to changes in attention. Recent dual task studies have revealed a possible decline in the ability of older, but not younger, adults to activate inhibitory processes within the motor cortex, which may be correlated with poor motor performance, and thus accidents. A reduction in cortical inhibition may be caused by neurodegeneration within prefrontal regions of the cortex with age, rendering older adults less able to allocate attention to corticomotor regions.
Highlights
Within studies of human movement and performance, there is growing research into motor deficits occurring due to changes in attention
These results demonstrate that the prefrontal regions are involved in the allocation of the increased attention required for a dual task (DT)
The analysis of “high” and “low” performing older adults and silent period (SP) duration was conducted within this movement condition, revealing shorter SPs for the lower performing older subgroup than the higher performing older subgroup (p < 0.001). These results demonstrate a significant relationship between poorer DT motor performance in older adults and a reduction in inhibitory control within the M1
Summary
Within studies of human movement and performance, there is growing research into motor deficits occurring due to changes in attention. While behavioral studies of this kind have identified attention as a causative factor in accidents, there has been comparatively less research devoted to the underlying cortical responses during motor performance, and fewer experiments comparing old and young populations within this paradigm. This mini-review will initially present prominent theories explaining reductions in motor performance with additional attention. Research demonstrating cortical changes with attention will be discussed, with a focus on DT methods due to their ability to isolate and control levels of attention within experiments In doing so, this mini-review refers to articles that have used a method to investigate cortical responses to changes in attention during motor tasks. While these searches were conducted thoroughly, some articles found using these methods were not reported, and certain articles gathered outside this search were reported as evidence if deemed appropriate by all authors
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