Deterioration, compensation and decompensation of sensorimotor control processes during aging
Description: Aging is associated with myriad behavioral and physiological modifications. Any modification between young and older adults on sensorimotor performances has long been thought to result from deterioration processes only. Are there not any beneficial sensorimotor modifications that accompany and possibly compensate for deleterious ones? The literature about aging effects on cognition, for example, has consensually shown that specific compensatory brain processes allow older adults to maintain performance levels on various cognitive tasks. The overarching objective of this project is to tease apart compensatory from deleterious sensorimotor control processes in the aging brain. We postulate that the use of coarse behavioral paradigms, i.e., that did not allow focusing on specific control processes, has hindered the understanding of sensorimotor compensation versus deterioration processes in aging. We propose to employ a focused and well-established behavioral paradigm to assess gravity-related optimal planning of arm movements in young and older participants. The literature has shown that healthy young and older adults plan movements that exhibit direction-dependent differences in the vertical plane. Precisely, kinematic and electromyographic analyses, coupled with optimal control modeling, demonstrated that direction-dependent patterns result from an optimization process that minimizes muscle effort. Nonetheless, some differences exist between healthy young and older adults regarding this optimization process, notably when comparing movements performed with the dominant and non-dominant arm. More, preliminary results in participants presenting with mild cognitive impairments show that this ability decreases with cognitive level. In this project, using electroencephalography we plan to build upon this behavioral knowledge to disentangle, compensating, deteriorating, and decompensating sensorimotor control processes in the healthy and pathological aging brain.
Funder: Agence Nationale de la Recherche
Amount: €321,000
Funding type: research
Funder scheme: AAPG2023
Start date: 2023-12-01
Investigator: Jérémie GAVEAU
Institution: COGNITION, ACTION ET PLASTRICITE SENSORI-MOTRICE - U 1093
Topic: Motor Control and Adaptation
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Funded outputs count: 0
Funder award ID: ANR-23-CE37-0027
OpenAlex ID: G2251408440