RT Journal Article
T1 A strategy of faster movements used by elderly humans to lift objects of increasing weight in ecological context
A1 Hoellinger, Thomas
A1 McIntyre, Joseph
A1 Jami, Lena
A1 Hanneton, Sylvain
A1 Cheron, Guy
A1 Roby-Brami, Agnes
AB It is not known whether, during the course of aging, changes occur in the motor strategies used by the CNS for lifting objects of different weights. Here, we analyzed the kinematics of object-lifting in two different healthy groups (young and elderly people) plus one well-known deafferented patient (GL). The task was to reach and lift onto a shelf an opaque cylindrical object with changing weight. The movements of the hand and object were recorded with electromagnetic sensors. In an ecological context (i.e. no instruction was given about movement speed), we found that younger participants, elderly people and GL did not all move at the same speed and that, surprisingly, elder people are faster. We also observed that the lifting trajectories were constant for both the elderly and the deafferented patient while younger participants raised their hand higher when the object weighed more. It appears that, depending on age and on available proprioceptive information, the CNS uses different strategies of lifting. We suggest that elder people tend to optimize their feedforward control in order to compensate for less functional afferent feedback, perhaps to optimize movement time and energy expenditure at the expense of high precision. In the case of complete loss of proprioceptive input, however, compensation follows a different strategy as suggested by GL's behavior who moved more slowly compared to both our younger and older participants.
SN 0306-4522
YR 2017
FD 2017-08-15
LK https://hdl.handle.net/11556/4560
UL https://hdl.handle.net/11556/4560
LA eng
NO Hoellinger , T , McIntyre , J , Jami , L , Hanneton , S , Cheron , G & Roby-Brami , A 2017 , ' A strategy of faster movements used by elderly humans to lift objects of increasing weight in ecological context ' , Neuroscience , vol. 357 , pp. 384-399 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroscience.2017.04.010
NO Publisher Copyright: © 2017
DS TECNALIA Publications
RD 26 jul 2024