Highlights
- •In young adults, hand muscles are selectively activated when viewing a safety handle.
- •This priming effect based on vision is entirely absent in older adults.
- •Aging may diminish the ability to put our visual world into automatic motor terms.
Abstract
Merely viewing objects within reachable space can activate motor cortical networks
and potentiate movement. This holds potential value for smooth interaction with objects
in our surroundings, and could offer an advantage for quickly generating targeted
hand movements (e.g. grasping a support rail to maintain stability). The present study
investigated if viewing a wall-mounted safety handle resulted in automatic activation
of motor cortical networks, and if this effect changes with age. Twenty-five young
adults (18–30 years) and seventeen older adults (65+ years) were included in this
study. Single-pulse, transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied over the motor
cortical hand representation of young and older adults shortly after they viewed a
safety handle within reaching distance. Between trials, vision was occluded and the
environment was unpredictably altered to reveal either a safety handle, or no handle
(i.e. covered). Modulation of intrinsic hand muscle activity was evident in young
adults when viewing a handle, and this was selective in terms of both the muscles
activated and the time at which it emerged. By contrast, older adults failed to show
any changes when viewing the safety handle. Specifically, the presence of a handle
increased corticospinal activity in hand muscles of young adults when TMS was applied
120 ms after opening the goggles (p = .014), but not in the older adults (p > .954).
The fact that the visual priming observed in younger adults was absent in older adults
suggests that aging may diminish the ability to quickly put our visual world into
automatic motor terms.
Keywords
To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
Purchase one-time access:
Academic & Personal: 24 hour online accessCorporate R&D Professionals: 24 hour online accessOne-time access price info
- For academic or personal research use, select 'Academic and Personal'
- For corporate R&D use, select 'Corporate R&D Professionals'
Subscribe:
Subscribe to MaturitasAlready a print subscriber? Claim online access
Already an online subscriber? Sign in
Register: Create an account
Institutional Access: Sign in to ScienceDirect
References
- Premotor cortex activation during observation and naming of familiar tools.NeuroImage. 1997; 6: 231-236https://doi.org/10.1006/nimg.1997.0293
- Broken affordances, broken objects: a TMS study.Neuropsychologia. 2009; 47: 3074-3078https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.07.003
- The space of affordances: a TMS study.Neuropsychologia. 2011; 49: 1369-1372https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2011.01.021
- Viewing objects and planning actions: on the potentiation of grasping behaviours by visual objects.Brain Cogn. 2011; 77: 257-264https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2011.08.002
- Are object affordances fully automatic? A case of covert attention.Behav. Neurosci. 2013; 127: 797-802
- Corticospinal facilitation during observation of graspable objects: a transcranial magnetic stimulation study.PLoS One. 2012; 7e49025https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0049025
- On the Relation Between Seen Objects and Components of Potential Actions.1998https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.24.3.830
- The Ecological Approach To Visual Perception.Houghton Mifflin, Boston1979
- Motor affordance for grasping a safety handle.Neurosci. Lett. 2018; 683: 131-137https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2018.05.040
- High working memory load increases intracortical inhibition in primary motor cortex and diminishes the motor affordance effect.J. Neurosci. 2016; 36: 5544-5555https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0284-16.2016
- Selective review of cognitive aging.J. Int. Neuropsychol. Soc. JINS. 2010; 16: 754-760https://doi.org/10.1017/S1355617710000706
- Safety, ethical considerations, and application guidelines for the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation in clinical practice and research.Clin. Neurophysiol. Off. J. Int. Fed. Clin. Neurophysiol. 2009; 120: 2008-2039https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clinph.2009.08.016
- Transcranial magnetic stimulation: diagnostic, therapeutic, and research potential.Neurology. 2007; 68 (doi:68/7/484 [pii]): 484-488
- Cortico-spinal inhibition reflects time but not event preparation: neural mechanisms of preparation dissociated by transcranial magnetic stimulation.Acta Psychol. (Amst.). 1999; 101: 243-266https://doi.org/10.1016/S0001-6918(99)00007-4
- Time-dependent changes in human corticospinal excitability reveal value-based competition for action during decision processing.J. Neurosci. 2012; 32: 8373-8382https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0270-12.2012
- A cortico-cortical mechanism mediating object-driven grasp in humans.Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 2005; 102: 898-903https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0409182102
- Explaining Psychological Statistics.4th ed. Wiley, 2013
- Excitability of human motor cortex inputs prior to grasp.J. Physiol. (Paris). 2007; 581: 189-201https://doi.org/10.1113/jphysiol.2006.123356
- Temporary interference in human lateral premotor cortex suggests dominance for the selection of movements. A study using transcranial magnetic stimulation.Brain. 1998; 121: 785-799https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/121.5.785
- Visualization of the information flow through human oculomotor cortical regions by transcranial magnetic stimulation.J. Neurophysiol. 1998; 80: 936-946https://doi.org/10.1152/jn.1998.80.2.936
- Transcranial magnetic stimulation: decomposing the processes underlying action preparation.Neuroscientist. 2016; 22: 392-405https://doi.org/10.1177/1073858415592594
- Causes and prevalence of visual impairment among adults in the United States.Arch. Ophthalmol. Chic. Ill 1960. 2004; 122: 477-485https://doi.org/10.1001/archopht.122.4.477
- Spatial vision in older adults: perceptual changes and neural bases.Ophthalmic Physiol. Opt. 2018; 38: 363-375https://doi.org/10.1111/opo.12565
- Age-related changes in cortical blood flow activation during visual processing of faces and location.J. Neurosci. 1994; 14: 1450-1462https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.14-03-01450.1994
- Role of peripheral vision in rapid perturbation-evoked reach-to-grasp reactions.Exp. Brain Res. 2013; 229: 609-619https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-013-3624-z
- Transient inhibition of primary motor cortex suppresses hand muscle responses during a reactive reach to grasp.Neurosci. Lett. 2011; 504: 83-87https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neulet.2011.09.001
- Parallels in control of voluntary and perturbation-evoked reach-to-grasp movements: EMG and kinematics.Exp. Brain Res. Hirnforsch. Cerebrale. 2007; 181: 627-637https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-007-0959-3
- The use of peripheral vision to guide perturbation-evoked reach-to-grasp balance-recovery reactions.Exp. Brain Res. 2010; 207: 105-118https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-010-2434-9
- Time to disengage: holding an object influences the execution of rapid compensatory reach-to-grasp reactions for recovery from whole-body instability.Exp. Brain Res. 2013; 231: 191-199https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-013-3682-2
- Isolating the age deficit in speeded performance.J. Gerontol. 1982; 37: 59-63https://doi.org/10.1093/geronj/37.1.59
- Attentional blocks are not responsible for age-related slowing.J. Gerontol. 1993; 48: P263-P270https://doi.org/10.1093/geronj/48.6.P263
- Aging and measures of processing speed.Biol. Psychol. 2000; 54: 35-54https://doi.org/10.1016/S0301-0511(00)00052-1
- An application of prefrontal cortex function theory to cognitive aging.Psychol. Bull. 1996; 120: 272-292
- Age-related decline in inhibitory control contributes to the increased Stroop effect observed in older adults.Psychophysiology. 2000; 37: 179-189
- Errors in postural preparation lead to increased choice reaction times for step initiation in older adults.J. Gerontol. Biol. Sci. Med. Sci. 2011; 66: 705-713https://doi.org/10.1093/gerona/glr054
Article info
Publication history
Published online: December 05, 2018
Accepted:
December 4,
2018
Received in revised form:
November 27,
2018
Received:
August 26,
2018
Identification
Copyright
© 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
