0000000000225031
AUTHOR
Arnaud Saimpont
Aging Affects the Mental Rotation of Left and Right Hands
BACKGROUND:Normal aging significantly influences motor and cognitive performance. Little is known about age-related changes in action simulation. Here, we investigated the influence of aging on implicit motor imagery. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS:Twenty young (mean age: 23.9+/-2.8 years) and nineteen elderly (mean age: 78.3+/-4.5 years) subjects, all right-handed, were required to determine the laterality of hands presented in various positions. To do so, they mentally rotated their hands to match them with the hand-stimuli. We showed that: (1) elderly subjects were affected in their ability to implicitly simulate movements of the upper limbs, especially those requiring the largest amplit…
Aging affects the mental simulation/planning of the "rising from the floor" sequence.
We investigated the effect of aging on the ability to mentally simulate/plan a complex sequential action of the whole body, namely "rising from the floor". Forty-four non-demented elderly people (mean age: 85.2±5.5 years) and 20 young people (mean age: 26.6±4.9 years) were included in the study. They were required to put in order six images representing the main movements necessary to get up from a sitting position on the floor. We showed that older subjects had poorer performance-both in terms of proportion of success and response time-than their younger counterparts. These results are in line with previous findings showing age-related alterations in action simulation/action planning proce…
Does Observation of Postural Imbalance Induce a Postural Reaction?
Import JabRef | WosArea Life Sciences and Biomedicine - Other Topics; International audience; Background: Several studies bring evidence that action observation elicits contagious responses during social interactions. However automatic imitative tendencies are generally inhibited and it remains unclear in which conditions mere action observation triggers motor behaviours. In this study, we addressed the question of contagious postural responses when observing human imbalance. Methodology/Principal Findings: We recorded participants' body sway while they observed a fixation cross (control condition), an upright point-light display of a gymnast balancing on a rope, and the same point-light di…