An Electrophysiological Investigation of Motor Imagery between Healthy Elderly and Young Adults

Abstract

Background and Purpose: Motor imagery is movement that carried out mentally rather than physically Most of the brain networks activated motor imagery are similar to those activated by motor execution Several previous studies have well documented the elicitation of lateralized readiness potentials (LRPs) during motor imagery when individuals perform a precuing task with concomitant electrophysiological recording Thus far there seem to have been no studies on electrophysiological comparison between young and elderly adults when performing such a cognitive task Hence the current study was aimed to investigate whether elderly healthy adults exhibit worse LRP performance during a precuing task as compared to young adults to further understand the difference of motor imagery performance between these two groups Materials/Methods: Twenty one elderly adults (73 38±4 01 years) and 21 young adults (21 62±2 09 years) performed a precuing task which consisted of two conditions a motor execution condition and a motor imagery condition while brain event-related potentials (ERP) were concurrently recorded To determine the effect of age on motor execution and motor imagery ability the onset of LRP latency and peak amplitudes were compared by using two-way ANOVA Results: The old group had longer LRP-1 and LRP-2 latency as compared to the young group when carrying out precuing task in the execution and imagery condition Besides the old group exhibited larger LRP-1 and LRP-2 amplitude as compared to the young group when doing this precuing task in the execution and imagery condition Conclusion: The present findings suggest that as compared to young adults elderly healthy adults have worse LRP performance (larger amplitude and longer latency) in motor execution and motor imagery conditions during precuing task This suggests that the old group requires more time to process the visual stimulus and to respond with the necessary motor programming Besides old group requires a larger activation on preprogramming area when doing such precuing task as compared to the young group

Date of Award	2014 Aug 21
Original language	English
Supervisor	Chia-Liang Tsai (Supervisor)