| Literature DB >> 25575222 |
Sara Graziadio1, Kianoush Nazarpour, Sabine Gretenkord, Andrew Jackson, Janet A Eyre.
Abstract
Hemispheric lateralization of movement control diminishes with age; whether this is compensatory or maladaptive is debated. The authors hypothesized that if compensatory, bilateral activation would lead to greater intermanual transfer in older subjects learning tasks that activate the cortex unilaterally in young adults. They studied 10 young and 14 older subjects, learning a unimanual visuomotor task comprising a feedforward phase, where there is unilateral cortical activation in young adults, and a feedback phase, which activates the cortex bilaterally in both age groups. Increased intermanual transfer was demonstrated in older subjects during feedforward learning, with no difference between groups during feedback learning. This finding is consistent with bilateral cortical activation being compensatory to maintain performance despite declining computational efficiency in neural networks.Entities:
Keywords: CRUNCH model; HAROLD model; aging; intermanual transfer
Mesh:
Year: 2015 PMID: 25575222 PMCID: PMC4299868 DOI: 10.1080/00222895.2014.981501
Source DB: PubMed Journal: J Mot Behav ISSN: 0022-2895 Impact factor: 1.328
FIGURE 1. Task design. (A) Muscle pairs controlled the cursor along axes diagonal to screen axis. The cursor (the black circle) is at 120 ms from movement onset (corresponding to the distance index). (B) Control signals (darker traces) were computed at 75 Hz by rectifying and smoothing the preceding 500 ms of electromyogram signal (EMG; lighter traces) to determine the instantaneous position of the myoelectric cursor. (C) Experimental design, showing sequence of left hand testing blocks interspersed with right hand training and video presentation.
FIGURE 2. Performance using score and distance indexes. (A and B, top) Bar graph indicates performance of the left hand (LH) before and after right hand (RH) training; line graph indicates RH performance across the four training subblocks averaged across all target positions. (A and B, bottom) Bar graph indicates averaged performance of the LH before and after the subjects watched a video. Error bars represent standard error. *p <0.05.
FIGURE 3. Intermanual transfer and rate of learning analysis. Intermanual transfer was greater in the older group for distance despite their comparable rate of learning. Error bars represent standard error. *p <0.05.