Over the past years, the European Commission has been pursuing the goal to promote an active and healthy lifestyle of the group of older adults in our ever-ageing society. One hallmark of ageing is a decline in motor functioning that represents a crucial impediment for an active living and functional independence. Hence, this core issue must be addressed in order to promote mental and physical health throughout the lifespan. Age-related motor functioning decline can include movement slowing, postural instability, and coordination deficits, all of which may severely hinder older adults’ active participation in society and impairing their quality of life. The present project was designed to pave the way for effective, cost-efficient interventions to mitigate motor decline in older adults by targeting more generic brain functions that guide and control goal-directed actions—the executive functions.
Complex motor tasks, such as coordinating simultaneous actions of both hands, require precisely controlled movements. Therefore, complex motor coordination relies on an individual’s capacity to plan and control their actions. Such high-level mental processes that control low-level processes are termed “executive functions”. These executive abilities thus represent a conjunction between motor and cognitive functions. Previous research has demonstrated older adults to rely increasingly on executive functions to maintain successful motor performance. At the same time, executive functions decline during ageing, which potentially further compromises motor control in ageing. If better executive functions facilitate movement control, ameliorating executive abilities will represent a promising approach for enhancing motor abilities in older adults.
Executive functions is an umbrella term for multiple functions. One well-established framework distinguishes between three key aspects of executive functioning: inhibition (suppressing unwanted actions), updating (monitoring and processing of working memory content), and shifting (flexibly switching between dissimilar tasks). Interestingly, all these executive functions likely contribute to successful motor functioning, but it has remained unclear so far whether some facets of executive functioning are particularly crucial for motor control. Hence, this project aims at revealing which aspects of executive functioning are most relevant for movement decline in older adults. Executive functions that are closely linked to motor performance constitute potential intervention targets. To investigate the relations between executive functions and motor performance, a battery of computerized executive and motor tasks is administered to a large number of older adults (60 years and older). For comparison, a group of young individuals (18-40 years) completes the same test battery.
To gain a comprehensive understanding of age-related changes in motor function, this project studies behavior in conjunction with its neural correlates. The healthy brain is organized in networks, where clusters of different brain areas are specialized for performance of distinct tasks. Profound network re-organization occurs during ageing, with aberrant coupling between usually distinct areas. Previous research has indicated that abnormal connectivity between brain networks is related to decreased motor performance. In this study, networks are investigated using multimodal neuroimaging techniques. Specifically, resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging is applied to study functional networks (i.e. networks of brain areas showing similar activity over time), whereas diffusion-weighted neuroimaging is applied to study structural networks (i.e. networks of brain areas that are anatomically linked).
This work combines motor and neuropsychological assessments with multimodal neuroimaging to pave the way for cognitive training interventions to improve motor functions in older adults. It will unravel how brain network alterations are linked to motor and executive performance, allowing for a better understanding of age-related performance declines in both domains.
