The effect of ageing on multisensory integration for the control of movement timing
The effect of ageing on multisensory integration for the control of movement timing
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DOI：
10.1007/s00221-011-2740-x
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发表时间：
2011-09-01
影响因子：
2
通讯作者：
Welchman, Andrew E.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Elliott, Mark T.;Wing, Alan M.;Welchman, Andrew E.
以前，它已被证明，同步动作与周期性起搏刺激不受老化。然而，同步通常需要组合跨多个定时信息源的证据。我们先前已经表明，大脑整合多感官线索以及时实现对事件的最佳估计，并随后减少同步运动的可变性（Elliott等人，Eur J Neurosci 31（10）：1828-1835，2010）。然而，目前还不清楚，如果在老年人的时间线索的感觉整合退化，这是否会导致同步性能降低。在这里，我们测试与年龄相关的变化时，同步动作多感官的时间线索。我们比较了年轻人（N = 15，年龄在18-37岁）和老年人（N = 15，年龄在63-80岁）之间的同步性能，使用手指敲击任务的听觉和触觉节拍器呈现单峰和双峰。我们在听觉节拍器中加入了时间抖动，以确定参与者是否会整合听觉和触觉信号，并在双峰条件下降低听觉节拍器的权重，因为其可靠性降低。我们发现，老年人与年轻人的表现相匹配时，同步到一个等电位听觉或触觉节拍器。当听觉节拍器的时间规律性降低时，在单峰和双峰条件下，老年人的表现比年轻人下降的程度更大。然而，成比例地，两组显示出类似的改善同步性能的双峰条件相比，同等的，仅限条件。我们的结论是，虽然老年人变得更加可变的同步不太规则的节拍，他们没有表现出任何赤字的多感官时间线索的整合，这表明使用多感官信息可能有助于减轻任何赤字的协调行动，以复杂的时间线索。
Previously, it has been shown that synchronising actions with periodic pacing stimuli are unaffected by ageing. However, synchronisation often requires combining evidence across multiple sources of timing information. We have previously shown the brain integrates multisensory cues to achieve a best estimate of the events in time and subsequently reduces variability in synchronised movements (Elliott et al. in Eur J Neurosci 31(10):1828-1835, 2010). Yet, it is unclear if sensory integration of temporal cues in older adults is degraded and whether this leads to reduced synchronisation performance. Here, we test for age-related changes when synchronising actions to multisensory temporal cues. We compared synchronisation performance between young (N = 15, aged 18-37 years) and older adults (N = 15, aged 63-80 years) using a finger-tapping task to auditory and tactile metronomes presented unimodally and bimodally. We added temporal jitter to the auditory metronome to determine whether participants would integrate auditory and tactile signals, with reduced weighting of the auditory metronome as its reliability decreased under bimodal conditions. We found that older adults matched the performance of young adults when synchronising to an isochronous auditory or tactile metronome. When the temporal regularity of the auditory metronome was reduced, older adults' performance was degraded to a greater extent than the young adults in both unimodal and bimodal conditions. However, proportionally both groups showed similar improvements in synchronisation performance in bimodal conditions compared with the equivalent, auditory-only conditions. We conclude that while older adults become more variable in synchronising to less regular beats, they do not show any deficit in the integration of multisensory temporal cues, suggesting that using multisensory information may help mitigate any deficits in coordinating actions to complex timing cues.