Age-dependent changes in the ability to encode a novel elementary motor memory.
In healthy individuals, motor training elicits cortical plasticity that encodes the kinematic details of the practiced movements and is thought to underlie recovery of function after stroke. The influence of age on this form of plasticity is incompletely understood. We studied 55 healthy subjects and identified a substantial decrease in training-dependent plasticity as a function of age in the absence of differences in training kinematics. These results suggest that the ability of the healthy aging motor cortex to reorganize in response to training decreases with age.
Sawaki
Lumy
L
Human Cortical Physiology Section/National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.
Yaseen
Zaneb
Z
Kopylev
Leonid
L
Cohen
Leonardo G
LG
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D003213:Conditioning, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D019054:Evoked Potentials, Motor / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008280:Magnetics; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D009048:Motor Skills / Q000502:physiology*; D009473:Neuronal Plasticity / Q000502:physiology*