Author:

Keywords:

Aging, Bimanual coordination, Dynamical systems approach, Science & Technology, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Geriatrics & Gerontology, Dynamic systems theory, PHASE-TRANSITIONS, CRITICAL FLUCTUATIONS, PATTERNS, HAND, CONSTRAINTS, PHYSIOLOGY, COMPLEXITY, ATTENTION, STABILITY, MOVEMENTS, Acoustic Stimulation, Adult, Age Factors, Aged, Female, Functional Laterality, Hand, Humans, Male, Pronation, Psychomotor Performance, Reaction Time, Signal Transduction, Supination, Systems Theory, Young Adult, 1103 Clinical Sciences, 1106 Human Movement and Sports Sciences, 1701 Psychology, Gerontology, 3202 Clinical sciences, 5202 Biological psychology, 5203 Clinical and health psychology

Abstract:

The present study examined the effects of aging on the execution of a bimanual coordination task in a classical phase transition paradigm in which coordination patterns (inphase and anti-phase) and movement frequency were manipulated. Two groups of adults, the so-called young (average age 26 years) and old (average age 71 years) participants, performed both in-phase and anti-phase patterns at different frequencies. As we expected variability of relative phase was larger for older participants than for younger ones for both the in-phase and the anti-phase coordination patterns. Moreover, phase transitions occurred at lower frequencies for older participants and more transitions were observed for older than for younger participants. Although no specific hypotheses were made about the prominent source(s) of age-related changes in coordination dynamics (i.e., an alteration in the coupling function and/or an increase of the magnitude of noise), our results suggest that these changes might result from increases in the (neural) noise to be found in the (bimanual) action system.