0000000000599134
AUTHOR
Pascaline Personnier
Decline in motor prediction in elderly subjects: right versus left arm differences in mentally simulated motor actions.
This study investigates the effects of age upon the temporal features of executed and imagined movements performed with the dominant (D; right) and nondominant (ND; left) arms. Thirty right-handed subjects were divided into two groups: (i) the young group (n=15; mean age: 22.5+/-2.5 years) and (ii) the elderly group (n=15; mean age: 70.2+/-2.2 years). The motor task, involving arm pointing movements among four pairs of targets (.5cm, 1cm, 1.5cm and 2cm), imposed strong spatiotemporal constraints. During overt performance, young and elderly subjects modulated movement duration according to the size of targets, despite the fact that movement speed decreased with age as well as in the left arm…
Mentally represented motor actions in normal aging: III. Electromyographic features of imagined arm movements.
Abstract Motor imagery is a cognitive process during which subjects mentally simulate movements without actually performing them. Here, we investigated the temporal and electromyographic (EMG) features of imagined arm movements in healthy elderly adults. Twelve young (mean age: 24.0 ± 1.3 years) and 12 elderly (mean age: 67.0 ± 4.5 years) participants executed and mentally simulated, with their right and left arms and as fast and as accurately as possible, arm pointing movements between three targets located in the frontal plane. We used the mental chronometry paradigm as an indicator of the accuracy of the motor imagery process (i.e. isochrony between executed and imagined movements) and t…
Temporal features of imagined locomotion in normal aging.
Motor imagery is the ability to mentally simulate a movement without executing it. Previous investigations have reported a deterioration of this ability during complex arm movements in aged adults. In the present study, we aimed to extend these findings by investigating the temporal features of imagined precision gait in healthy elderly adults. Locomotion is a unique example of imagined movement because it involves simulated full-body movement and the concurrent updating of environmental spatial information. Nine young and nine older adults actually or mentally walked (walking distance: 5m) along three paths having different widths (15cm, 25cm, and 50cm). The narrowest path required balance…
Mentally represented motor actions in normal agingII. The influence of the gravito-inertial context on the duration of overt and covert arm movements
Here, we address the question of whether normal aging influences action representation by comparing the ability of 14 young (age: 23.6 +/- 2.1 years) and 14 older (age: 70.1 +/- 4.5 years) adults to mentally simulate arm movements under a varying dynamic context. We conducted two experiments in which we experimentally manipulated the gravity and inertial components of arm dynamics: (i) unloaded and loaded vertical arm movements, rotation around the shoulder joint, (ii) unloaded and loaded horizontal arm movements, rotations around the shoulder and elbow joints, in two directions (inertial anisotropy phenomenon). The main findings indicated that imagery ability was equivalent between the two…