Recanati School for Community Health Professions, Department of Physical Therapy, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
Sci Rep. 2017 Jun 12;7(1):3270. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-03430-4.
Young individuals make larger and faster forearm movements when visual feedback about the movement is not available, compared to when it is. We set out to test whether this behavior persists with aging. We tested 40 participants, 20 in each age group - young and old, on a task that required making rhythmic movements of the forearm with and without visual feedback. Surprisingly, we found that older adults increased the speed and the amplitude of their movements to an even greater extent than did the young adults. Furthermore, we found that the increase in speed and amplitude during the non-vision trial segments improved their performance on the task, and they were able to leverage the change in these movement parameters (speed and amplitude) to improve their performance during subsequent trial segments that did include visual feedback. The improvement in accuracy on the task was accompanied by a decrease in path variability. The results indicate that older adults can adapt their movement parameters to enhance performance following a motor perturbation. They further suggest that motor variability in old age can be advantageous under certain circumstances.
与有视觉反馈时相比，年轻人在没有视觉反馈时会做出更大、更快的前臂运动。我们着手测试这种行为是否会随着年龄的增长而持续。我们测试了 40 名参与者，每个年龄组 20 人，分别为年轻人和老年人，他们在一项需要在前臂上进行有节奏的运动的任务中进行测试，同时有和没有视觉反馈。令人惊讶的是，我们发现老年人比年轻人更大大幅度地提高了运动速度和幅度。此外，我们发现，在无视觉试验段中速度和幅度的增加提高了他们在任务中的表现，并且他们能够利用这些运动参数（速度和幅度）的变化来改善随后包括视觉反馈的试验段中的表现。任务准确性的提高伴随着路径可变性的降低。结果表明，老年人可以调整他们的运动参数，以在运动干扰后提高表现。他们进一步表明，在某些情况下，老年人的运动可变性可能是有利的。
