Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program and Department of Kinesiology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA.
J Neurophysiol. 2013 Jun;109(12):3041-50. doi: 10.1152/jn.00532.2012. Epub 2013 Mar 27.
Behavioral deficits in visuomotor planning and control exhibited by children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) have been extensively reported. Although these functional impairments are thought to result from "atypical brain development," very few studies to date have identified potential neurological mechanisms. To address this knowledge gap, electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded from 6- to 12-yr-old children with and without DCD (n = 14 and 20, respectively) during the performance of a visuomotor drawing task. With respect to motor performance, typically developing (TD) children exhibited age-related improvements in key aspects of motor planning and control. Although some children with DCD performed outside this TD landscape (i.e., age-related changes within the TD group), the group developmental trajectory of the children with DCD was similar to that of the TD children. Despite overall similarities in performance, engagement of cortical resources in the children with DCD was markedly different from that in their TD counterparts. While the patterns of activation are stable in TD children across the age range, the young children with DCD exhibited less engagement of motor cortical brain areas and the older children with DCD exhibited greater engagement of motor cortical brain areas than their TD peers. These results suggest that older children with DCD may employ a compensatory strategy in which increased engagement of relevant motor resources allows these children to perform comparably to their TD peers. Moreover, the magnitude of activation was related to several kinematic measures, particularly in children with DCD, suggesting that greater engagement in motor resources may underlie better behavioral performance.
发展性协调障碍（DCD）儿童在视动规划和控制方面表现出的行为缺陷已被广泛报道。尽管这些功能障碍被认为是由于“非典型的大脑发育”引起的，但迄今为止很少有研究确定潜在的神经机制。为了弥补这一知识空白，研究人员在 6 至 12 岁患有和未患有 DCD 的儿童（分别为 14 名和 20 名）执行视动绘图任务期间记录了脑电图（EEG）。就运动表现而言，发育正常的（TD）儿童在运动规划和控制的关键方面表现出与年龄相关的改善。尽管一些患有 DCD 的儿童表现出与 TD 景观不同的（即 TD 组内的与年龄相关的变化），但患有 DCD 的儿童的组发展轨迹与 TD 儿童相似。尽管表现总体相似，但 DCD 儿童的皮质资源参与程度与 TD 儿童明显不同。虽然 TD 儿童在整个年龄范围内的激活模式是稳定的，但患有 DCD 的年幼儿童表现出较少的运动皮质脑区参与，而年龄较大的患有 DCD 的儿童表现出比其 TD 同龄人更多的运动皮质脑区参与。这些结果表明，年龄较大的患有 DCD 的儿童可能采用了一种补偿策略，即增加相关运动资源的参与程度使这些儿童能够与他们的 TD 同龄人相媲美。此外，激活的幅度与几个运动学测量值有关，特别是在患有 DCD 的儿童中，这表明运动资源的更大参与可能是更好的行为表现的基础。
