Increased prefrontal top-down control in older adults predicts motor performance and age-group association

NeuroImage

Immo Weber¹  Carina Renate Oehrn²  Lars Timmermann³  Felix Sebastian Nettersheim³  Fabienne Homberg⁴  Philipp Alexander Loehrer⁵  Marc Tittgemeyer⁵ 

[1] Center for Mind, Brain and Behavior (CMBB), Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany;Corresponding author.;Department of Neurology, Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany;Department of Cardiology, University Hospital Cologne, Cologne, Germany;Department of Neurology, University Hospital Gießen and Marburg, Marburg, Germany;

关键词: Ageing;    Bimanual coordination;    Movement preparation;    Dynamic Causal Modelling (DCM);    Electroencephalography (EEG);   

DOI  :  

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Bimanual motor control declines during ageing, affecting the ability of older adults to maintain independence. An important underlying factor is cortical atrophy, particularly affecting frontal and parietal areas in older adults. As these regions and their interplay are highly involved in bimanual motor preparation, we investigated age-related connectivity changes between prefrontal and premotor areas of young and older adults during the preparatory phase of complex bimanual movements using high-density electroencephalography. Generative modelling showed that excitatory inter-hemispheric prefrontal to premotor coupling in older adults predicted age-group affiliation and was associated with poor motor-performance. In contrast, excitatory intra-hemispheric prefrontal to premotor coupling enabled older adults to maintain motor-performance at the cost of lower movement speed. Our results disentangle the complex interplay in the prefrontal-premotor network during movement preparation underlying reduced bimanual control and the well-known speed-accuracy trade-off seen in older adults.

【 授权许可】

Unknown