Eye-hand coordination: Effects of age, sex, and experience on brain and behaviour

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The broad aim of this research is to understand the fundamental neural mechanisms for controlling voluntary movement. The objectives are to characterize the age-, sex- and experience-related differences in both brain activity and behaviour for skilled visually-guided limb movements. Four related but distinct projects comprise this general line of inquiry. Project 1 will look at the age-, sex- and experience-related differences in skilled performance and cognitive motor integration, and the neural underpinnings to these differences. Our previous grant documented the effects of age, sex, and skill level on coordination development alone, and began looking at how the brain controls skilled movement when an element of cognition is included. We will build upon these findings by examining how such factors affect cognitive-motor integration a skill crucial to both daily living and many work/sport activities yet whose development has never been documented. Related to this study, we will also explore the neural mechanisms underlying the behavioral consequences of decoupling the spatial directions of eye and arm movements in elite and non-elite performers. This project will provide fundamental information about how the brain develops control for rule-based skilled movement differently as a function of sex and experience. Three further projects will provide insight into the nature of movement control in experts, as well as age and sex-related differences within these populations, using a more in-depth motor psychophysical approach. Project 2 will look at the mechanisms underlying augmented motor learning by comparing non-athletes to elite-level male and female athletes. In Project 3 we will continue our research into the neural underpinning of sex-related differences in brain networks for coordinated action. Our previous work has shown that there are sex-related differences in patterns of brain activity in the premotor and parietal cortices during eye-hand co-ordination tasks. However, there is currently only a very limited understanding of the functional significance of these different patterns of brain activity. Here we will examine the specific neurological processes that underlie observed sex-related differences in overall patterns of brain activity. Finally, we will examine how one can use different coordination measures to predict performance in elite athletes in competition. This line of inquiry will generate knowledge about brain and behaviour that can translate to the industrial (human factors engineering), biomedical engineering (telerobotic and medical equipment design), and professional sport training & coaching sectors. Fundamentally, this research will advance our understanding of how we interact with objects in the world around us.