Cargando…

Age-Related Reversal of Postural Adjustment Characteristics During Motor Imagery

Physical and imagined movements show similar behavioral constraints and neurophysiological activation patterns. An inhibition mechanism is thought to suppress overt movement during motor imagery, but it does not effectively suppress autonomic or postural adjustments. Inhibitory processes and postura...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Mitra, Suvobrata, Doherty, Nicola, Boulton, Hayley, Maylor, Elizabeth A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Psychological Association 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5144809/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27808526
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pag0000120
_version_ 1782473185293238272
author Mitra, Suvobrata
Doherty, Nicola
Boulton, Hayley
Maylor, Elizabeth A.
author_facet Mitra, Suvobrata
Doherty, Nicola
Boulton, Hayley
Maylor, Elizabeth A.
author_sort Mitra, Suvobrata
collection PubMed
description Physical and imagined movements show similar behavioral constraints and neurophysiological activation patterns. An inhibition mechanism is thought to suppress overt movement during motor imagery, but it does not effectively suppress autonomic or postural adjustments. Inhibitory processes and postural stability both deteriorate with age. Thus, older people’s balance is potentially vulnerable to interference from postural adjustments induced by thoughts about past or future actions. Here, young and older adults stood upright and executed or imagined manual reaching movements. Reported arm movement time (MT) of all participants increased with target distance. Older participants reported longer MT than young participants when executing arm movements, but not when imagining them. Older adults’ anteroposterior (AP) and mediolateral (ML) postural sway was higher than young adults’ at baseline, but their AP sway fell below their baseline level during manual imagery. In contrast, young adults’ AP sway increased during imagery relative to their baseline. A similar tendency to reduce sway in the ML direction was also observed in older adults during imagery in a challenging stance. These results suggest that postural response during manual motor imagery reverses direction with age. Motor imagery and action planning are ubiquitous tasks, and older people are likely to spend more time engaged in them. The shift toward restricting body sway during these tasks is akin to a postural threat response, with the potential to interfere with balance during activities of daily living.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-5144809
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2016
publisher American Psychological Association
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-51448092016-12-16 Age-Related Reversal of Postural Adjustment Characteristics During Motor Imagery Mitra, Suvobrata Doherty, Nicola Boulton, Hayley Maylor, Elizabeth A. Psychol Aging Articles Physical and imagined movements show similar behavioral constraints and neurophysiological activation patterns. An inhibition mechanism is thought to suppress overt movement during motor imagery, but it does not effectively suppress autonomic or postural adjustments. Inhibitory processes and postural stability both deteriorate with age. Thus, older people’s balance is potentially vulnerable to interference from postural adjustments induced by thoughts about past or future actions. Here, young and older adults stood upright and executed or imagined manual reaching movements. Reported arm movement time (MT) of all participants increased with target distance. Older participants reported longer MT than young participants when executing arm movements, but not when imagining them. Older adults’ anteroposterior (AP) and mediolateral (ML) postural sway was higher than young adults’ at baseline, but their AP sway fell below their baseline level during manual imagery. In contrast, young adults’ AP sway increased during imagery relative to their baseline. A similar tendency to reduce sway in the ML direction was also observed in older adults during imagery in a challenging stance. These results suggest that postural response during manual motor imagery reverses direction with age. Motor imagery and action planning are ubiquitous tasks, and older people are likely to spend more time engaged in them. The shift toward restricting body sway during these tasks is akin to a postural threat response, with the potential to interfere with balance during activities of daily living. American Psychological Association 2016-11-03 2016-12 /pmc/articles/PMC5144809/ /pubmed/27808526 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pag0000120 Text en © 2016 The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article has been published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Copyright for this article is retained by the author(s). Author(s) grant(s) the American Psychological Association the exclusive right to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher.
spellingShingle Articles
Mitra, Suvobrata
Doherty, Nicola
Boulton, Hayley
Maylor, Elizabeth A.
Age-Related Reversal of Postural Adjustment Characteristics During Motor Imagery
title Age-Related Reversal of Postural Adjustment Characteristics During Motor Imagery
title_full Age-Related Reversal of Postural Adjustment Characteristics During Motor Imagery
title_fullStr Age-Related Reversal of Postural Adjustment Characteristics During Motor Imagery
title_full_unstemmed Age-Related Reversal of Postural Adjustment Characteristics During Motor Imagery
title_short Age-Related Reversal of Postural Adjustment Characteristics During Motor Imagery
title_sort age-related reversal of postural adjustment characteristics during motor imagery
topic Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5144809/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27808526
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pag0000120
work_keys_str_mv AT mitrasuvobrata agerelatedreversalofposturaladjustmentcharacteristicsduringmotorimagery
AT dohertynicola agerelatedreversalofposturaladjustmentcharacteristicsduringmotorimagery
AT boultonhayley agerelatedreversalofposturaladjustmentcharacteristicsduringmotorimagery
AT maylorelizabetha agerelatedreversalofposturaladjustmentcharacteristicsduringmotorimagery