Aging Affects the Mental Rotation of Left and Right Hands |
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Authors: | Arnaud Saimpont Thierry Pozzo Charalambos Papaxanthis |
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Affiliation: | 1. INSERM U887 Motricité-Plasticité, Université de Bourgogne, Dijon, France.; 2. Italian Institute of Technology, Genoa, Italy.;University of Leuven, Belgium |
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Abstract: | BackgroundNormal aging significantly influences motor and cognitive performance. Little is known about age-related changes in action simulation. Here, we investigated the influence of aging on implicit motor imagery.Methodology/Principal FindingsTwenty young (mean age: 23.9±2.8 years) and nineteen elderly (mean age: 78.3±4.5 years) subjects, all right-handed, were required to determine the laterality of hands presented in various positions. To do so, they mentally rotated their hands to match them with the hand-stimuli. We showed that: (1) elderly subjects were affected in their ability to implicitly simulate movements of the upper limbs, especially those requiring the largest amplitude of displacement and/or with strong biomechanical constraints; (2) this decline was greater for movements of the non-dominant arm than of the dominant arm.Conclusions/SignificanceThese results extend recent findings showing age-related alterations of the explicit side of motor imagery. They suggest that a general decline in action simulation occurs with normal aging, in particular for the non-dominant side of the body. |
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