[Age-related difficulty in rhythmic movement].
In order to identify a characteristic difficulty in rhythmic movements with aging, a total of 380 healthy participants aged from 18 to 85 years (group 1), and 1,134 elderly community residents aged from 65 to 89 years (group 2), were examined using a finger-tapping test. The test requested the participant to tap in time to a periodic sound train with frequencies of 2, 3, 4, and 5 Hz (cycles/sec) for group 1, and with 4 Hz for group 2. Tapping deviated towards a faster rate from the stimulus frequency by more than 3 msec at 4 Hz and/or 5 Hz, "hastened tap" (HT), was found to be characteristic of aging. In group 1, the participants who exhibited HT increased with age and reached more than 35% in their 60s and 70s. In group 2, the percentages of participants with HT at 4 Hz were 14.6 (60s), 15.9 (70s) and 29.3 (80s), which were very close to the 16.9% of participants with HT at 4 Hz over 65 years in group 1. This figure suggested that more than 50% of participants over 80 years exhibited HT in tapping test at 2 through 5 Hz. HT in the elderly appears to be similar to hastened tapping observed typically in patients with Parkinson's disease, suggesting a parallel of extrapyramidal motor dysfunction between normal aging and parkinsonism.
Hashizume
K
K
Faculty of Health & Sports Sciences, Osaka University.
Nagasaki
H
H
Ito
H
H
Furuna
T
T
Sugiura
M
M
Kinugasa
T
T
Maruyama
H
H
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005385:Fingers; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009068:Movement; D010507:Periodicity