Aging affects the mental rotation of left and right hands.
BACKGROUND
Normal 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.


RESULTS
Twenty 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
These 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.
Saimpont
Arnaud
A
INSERM U887 Motricité-Plasticité, Université de Bourgogne, Dijon, France. arnaudsaimpont@hotmail.com
Pozzo
Thierry
T
Papaxanthis
Charalambos
C
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male
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