Abstract
The aim of this study was to examine whether older adults use the same task-specific brain activation patterns during two different bimanual hand movement tasks as younger adults. Functional magnetic resonance brain imaging was performed in 18 younger (mean age: 30.3 ± 3.6 years) and 11 older adults (62.6 ± 6.8 years) during the execution of cooperative (mimicking opening a bottle) or non-cooperative (bimanual pro-/supination) hand movements. We expected to see a stronger task-specific involvement of the secondary somatosensory cortex (S2) during cooperative hand movements in older compared to younger adults. However, S2 activation was present in both groups during the cooperative task and was only significantly stronger compared to the non-cooperative task in younger adults. In a whole brain-analysis, the contrast between older and younger adults revealed a hyperactivation of the bilateral dorsal premotor cortex (precentral gyrus), right thalamus, right frontal operculum, anterior cingulate cortex, and supplementary motor areas in older adults (p < 0.001), with some of them being visible after correcting for age. Age was positively associated with fMRI signal changes in these regions across the whole sample. Older adults showed reduced gray matter volume but not in regions showing task-related fMRI group differences. We also found an increase in functional connectivity between SMA, M1, thalamus, and precentral gyri in older adults. In contrast, younger adults showed hyperconnectivity between S2 and S1. We conclude that older compared to younger adults show age-related functional neuroplastic changes in brain regions involved in motor control and performance.
Highlights
Aging leads to a decline in movement performance (Eudave et al, 2016; Zapparoli et al, 2016)
According to a functional fMRI in Aging During Movements magnetic resonance imaging study, a general increase in the activation of sensorimotor networks, including areas involved in cognitive monitoring of movement performance and integration of information from the two sides of the body, occurs in older participants who performed isolated flexion and extension of the wrist or ankle (Heuninckx et al, 2005)
We investigated functional connectivity (FC) related to spontaneous background activity (Fox et al, 2006; Fox and Raichle, 2007; Norman-Haignere et al, 2012) during the cooperative hand movement task to test for intra- and interhemispheric FC differences between groups
Summary
Aging leads to a decline in movement performance (Eudave et al, 2016; Zapparoli et al, 2016). According to a functional fMRI in Aging During Movements magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, a general increase in the activation of sensorimotor networks, including areas involved in cognitive monitoring of movement performance and integration of information from the two sides of the body, occurs in older participants who performed isolated flexion and extension of the wrist or ankle (Heuninckx et al, 2005). These findings indicate an age-related shift along a continuum from automatically to more “consciously” controlled movement performance. Hyperactivity was seen in older adults in other motor studies (Ward and Frackowiak, 2003; Ward, 2006; Heuninckx et al, 2008; Van Impe et al, 2009, 2011), indicating that this neuroplastic age-related change (i.e., brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections during aging) could be a generic rather than task-dependent process
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