Cognitive processes associated with proprioceptive information processing in the elderly: age-related neural overactivation and compensatory recruitment.

The ability to discern body/limb positions and movements (i.e. proprioception) is critical for many aspects of movement control. Interestingly, in a recent review of the aging literature by the candidate, it was revealed that proprioceptive sensibility is substantially degraded with age, leading to difficulties in performing daily activities. Given that peripheral proprioceptive signals are inherently noisier in elderly individuals, we hypothesize that old adults must recruit additional resources within the central nervous system to achieve young adult levels of performance on cognition-related proprioceptive tasks. In this fellowship proposal, three experiments are outlined that test this hypothesis using medical imaging of young and old adults performing different types of proprioceptive feedback processing tasks (i.e. perception, memory and attention). Overall, we expect that high versus low performing old adults will show overactivation of the brain, reflecting a compensatory strategy. This important result would complement, and extend to the sensory domain, previous work conducted in the supervisors laboratory. Such work has found that, during inter-limb coordination tasks, high-functioning old subjects show more extensive activations in the same brain areas as young adults, as well as unique activations in areas reflecting higher order feedback processing and cognition.

Keywords:Kinesthesis, Proprioception, Perception, Cognition, fMRI, Aging, Feedback processing

Disciplines:Neurosciences, Biological and physiological psychology, Cognitive science and intelligent systems, Developmental psychology and ageing, Animal experimental and comparative psychology, Applied psychology, Human experimental psychology, Orthopaedics