Dataset Information

Age-related changes in causal interactions between cortical motor regions during hand grip.

ABSTRACT: Brain activity during motor performance becomes more widespread and less lateralized with advancing age in response to ongoing degenerative processes. In this study, we were interested in the mechanism by which this change in the pattern of activity supports motor performance with advancing age. We used both transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess age related changes in motor system connectivity during isometric hand grip. Paired pulse TMS was used to measure the change in interhemispheric inhibition (IHI) from contralateral M1 (cM1) to ipsilateral M1 (iM1) during right hand grip. Dynamic Causal Modelling (DCM) of fMRI data was used to investigate the effect of age on causal interactions throughout the cortical motor network during right hand grip. Bayesian model selection was used to identify the causal model that best explained the data for all subjects. Firstly, we confirmed that the TMS and DCM measures both demonstrated a less inhibitory/more facilitatory influence of cM1 on iM1 during hand grip with advancing age. These values correlated with one another providing face validity for our DCM measures of connectivity. We found increasing reciprocal facilitatory influences with advancing age (i) between all ipsilateral cortical motor areas and (ii) between cortical motor areas of both hemispheres and iM1. There were no differences in the performance of our task with ageing suggesting that the ipsilateral cortical motor areas, in particular iM1, play a central role in maintaining performance levels with ageing through increasingly facilitatory cortico-cortical influences.

SUBMITTER: Boudrias MH

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3315004 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Age-related changes in causal interactions between cortical motor regions during hand grip.

Boudrias Marie-Hélène MH Gonçalves Carla Sá CS Penny Will D WD Park Chang-Hyun CH Rossiter Holly E HE Talelli Penelope P Ward Nick S NS

NeuroImage 20111118 4

Brain activity during motor performance becomes more widespread and less lateralized with advancing age in response to ongoing degenerative processes. In this study, we were interested in the mechanism by which this change in the pattern of activity supports motor performance with advancing age. We used both transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess age related changes in motor system connectivity during isometric hand grip. Paired pulse T ...[more]

PMID: 22119651

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Project description:In the scientific literature, there is much evidence of a relationship between age and dexterity, where increased age is related to slower, less nimble and less smooth, less coordinated and less controlled performances. While some suggest that the relationship is a direct consequence of reduced muscle strength associated to increased age, there is a lack of research that has systematically investigated the relationships between age, strength and hand dexterity. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the associations between age, grip strength and dexterity. 107 adults (range 18-93 years) completed a series of hand dexterity tasks (i.e. steadiness, line tracking, aiming, and tapping) and a test of maximal grip strength. We performed three phases of analyses. Firstly, we evaluated the simple relationships between pairs of variables; replicating the existing literature; and found significant relationships of increased age and reduced strength; increased age and reduced dexterity, and; reduced strength and reduced dexterity. Secondly, we used standard Multiple Regression (MR) models to determine which of the age and strength factors accounted for the greater variance in dexterity. The results showed that both age and strength made significant contributions to the data variance, but that age explained more of the variance in steadiness and line tracking dexterity, whereas strength explained more of the variance in aiming and tapping dexterity. In a third phase of analysis, we used MR analyses to show an interaction between age and strength on steadiness hand dexterity. Simple Slopes post-hoc analyses showed that the interaction was explained by the middle to older aged adults showing a relationship between reduced strength and reduced hand steadiness, whereas younger aged adults showed no relationship between strength and steadiness hand dexterity. The results are discussed in terms of how age and grip strength predict different types of hand dexterity in adults.

Project description:Recent longitudinal neuroimaging and neurophysiological studies have shown that tracking relative age-related changes in neural signals, rather than a static snapshot of a neural measure, could offer higher sensitivity for discriminating typically developing (TD) individuals from those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It is not clear, however, which aspects of age-related changes (trajectories) would be optimal for identifying atypical brain development in ASD. Using a large cross-sectional data set (Autism Brain Imaging Data Exchange [ABIDE] repository; releases I and II), we aimed to explore age-related changes in cortical thickness (CT) in TD and ASD populations (age range 6-30 years old). Cortical thickness was estimated from T1-weighted MRI images at three scales of spatial coarseness (three parcellations with different numbers of regions of interest). For each parcellation, three polynomial models of age-related changes in CT were tested. Specifically, to characterize alterations in CT trajectories, we compared the linear slope, curvature, and aberrancy of CT trajectories across experimental groups, which was estimated using linear, quadratic, and cubic polynomial models, respectively. Also, we explored associations between age-related changes with ASD symptomatology quantified as the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) scores. While no overall group differences in cortical thickness were observed across the entire age range, ASD and TD populations were different in terms of age-related changes, which were located primarily in frontal and tempo-parietal areas. These atypical age-related changes were also associated with ADOS scores in the ASD group and used to predict ASD from TD development. These results indicate that the curvature is the most reliable feature for localizing brain areas developmentally atypical in ASD with a more pronounced effect with symptomatology and is the most sensitive in predicting ASD development.

Dataset Information

Age-related changes in causal interactions between cortical motor regions during hand grip.

Publications

Age-related changes in causal interactions between cortical motor regions during hand grip.

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