Increased prefrontal top-down control in older adults predicts motor performance and age-group association
Philipp Alexander Loehrer,
Felix Sebastian Nettersheim,
Carina Renate Oehrn,
Fabienne Homberg,
Marc Tittgemeyer,
Lars Timmermann,
Immo Weber
Affiliations
Philipp Alexander Loehrer
Department of Neurology, University Hospital Gießen and Marburg, Marburg, Germany; Department of Neurology, Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany; Corresponding author.
Felix Sebastian Nettersheim
Department of Cardiology, University Hospital Cologne, Cologne, Germany
Carina Renate Oehrn
Department of Neurology, University Hospital Gießen and Marburg, Marburg, Germany; Department of Neurology, Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany; Center for Mind, Brain and Behavior (CMBB), Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany
Fabienne Homberg
Department of Neurology, University Hospital Gießen and Marburg, Marburg, Germany
Marc Tittgemeyer
Max Planck Institute for Metabolism Research, Cologne, Germany; Cologne Cluster of Excellence in Cellular Stress and Aging-Associated Disease (CECAD), Cologne, Germany
Lars Timmermann
Department of Neurology, University Hospital Gießen and Marburg, Marburg, Germany; Department of Neurology, Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany; Center for Mind, Brain and Behavior (CMBB), Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany
Immo Weber
Department of Neurology, Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany; Center for Mind, Brain and Behavior (CMBB), Philipps-University Marburg, Marburg, Germany
Bimanual motor control declines during ageing, affecting the ability of older adults to maintain independence. An important underlying factor is cortical atrophy, particularly affecting frontal and parietal areas in older adults. As these regions and their interplay are highly involved in bimanual motor preparation, we investigated age-related connectivity changes between prefrontal and premotor areas of young and older adults during the preparatory phase of complex bimanual movements using high-density electroencephalography. Generative modelling showed that excitatory inter-hemispheric prefrontal to premotor coupling in older adults predicted age-group affiliation and was associated with poor motor-performance. In contrast, excitatory intra-hemispheric prefrontal to premotor coupling enabled older adults to maintain motor-performance at the cost of lower movement speed. Our results disentangle the complex interplay in the prefrontal-premotor network during movement preparation underlying reduced bimanual control and the well-known speed-accuracy trade-off seen in older adults.
