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Wider, C. 
ORCID: 0000-0001-8531-1024,
2021.
Age-related differences in postural adjustments during limb movement and motor imagery in young and older adults: a kinematic analysis.
PhD, Nottingham Trent University.
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Abstract
Motor imagery (MI) shares many of the neurophysiological and behavioural characteristics associated with physical movements, and motor imagery training has been shown to be effective at improving subsequent performance on a given motor task. Jeannerod (2006) proposed that imagined movements are covert internal simulations of the physical counterpart. MI, therefore, provides an ideal setting for studying the anticipatory aspects of posture control.
Recent research has shown that systematic postural adjustments occur during periods of MI in young adults, although the timing and direction of these postural adjustments, relative to individual physical actions or imagery of these actions, is not well understood. Additionally, further research has demonstrated that in an older, aged population, MI fails to induce the same postural response seen in their younger counterparts. Older people exhibited relatively restricted postural sway during periods of imagined reaching movements, whereas young adults increased sway whilst performing the same imagined movements.
This thesis utilises kinematic measures to study anticipatory and compensatory postural motion in the temporal vicinity of physical and imagined forward arm raises. Healthy young and older adult participants performed, or imagined performing, unilateral and bilateral arm raises under self-initiated and externally triggered conditions.
Under bilateral arm raises, when MI was self-initiated, both age groups showed significant forward postural motion during the 1000 ms immediately prior to MI initiation. However, when MI was externally triggered, older participants did not show anticipatory postural motion (APM), whereas this was maintained in the younger participants.
When MI of the dominant arm was self-initiated neither age group showed significant APM in the anteroposterior plane. When MI was externally triggered, older participants did not show APM, whereas the younger participants did. Older participants did show movement in the mediolateral direction in both externally and self-initiated conditions indicating sensitivity to the weaker, non-dominant side of the body.
Finally, when MI of the non-dominant arm was self-initiated, older participants alone showed forward anteroposterior APM. However, when the same MI movement was externally triggered, there was again no APM observed.
Taken together these data demonstrate that MI is accompanied by APM and suggests that older adults are capable of and sensitive to postural motion planning. However, these data show that the use of APM is disrupted when the timing or onset of the task is not under their own control, and as such they may be particularly vulnerable to unpredictable environmental changes such as those that occur in fall situations. Unlike compensatory postural control, which relies on sensory feedback, the anticipatory component of postural control relies on forward motor planning, and as such these findings suggest that forward motor planning is disrupted by a decreasing ability to predict forthcoming events or a decrease in the ability to correctly judge the required postural change for balance.
As systematic APM was observed for self-initiated MI, this suggests that MI training may be an effective intervention for anticipatory postural control, strengthening corresponding neural networks and improving the ability to anticipate necessary posture changes. Additionally, these may be used to identify weak postural positions and pre-plan balancing strategies in later age.
| Item Type: | Thesis | ||||||||||||||||
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| Creators: | Wider, C. | ||||||||||||||||
| Contributors: |
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| Date: | December 2021 | ||||||||||||||||
| Rights: | This work is intellectual property of the author. You may copy up to 5% of this work for private study, or personal, non-commercial research. Any re-use of the information contained within this document should be fully referenced, quoting the author, title university, degree level and pagination. Queries or requests for any other use, or if a more substantial copy is required, should be directed to the owner of the Intellectual Property Rights. | ||||||||||||||||
| Divisions: | Schools > School of Social Sciences | ||||||||||||||||
| Record created by: | Linda Sullivan | ||||||||||||||||
| Date Added: | 09 Nov 2023 15:27 | ||||||||||||||||
| Last Modified: | 09 Nov 2023 15:27 | ||||||||||||||||
| URI: | https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/50337 |
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