Manual aiming in healthy aging: does proprioceptive acuity make the difference?

Population aging is a phenomenon that has characterized most countries in the world for many years now. Also, for some time now, the literature has shown some social and economic impacts of this phenomenon. This chapter intends to address an impact of a social nature, namely gender inequality, and an impact of an economic nature, namely the global burden of diseases, to which the literature on population aging has not yet given the necessary attention. For these impacts it is important to distinguish healthy aging from unhealthy aging. In fact, healthy aging not only reduces the global burden of disease but also contributes to a reduction in gender inequalities with regard to quality-adjusted years of life.

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Healthy Aging: What Makes the Difference

PsycCRITIQUES ◽

10.1037/a0009497 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 52 (39) ◽

Author(s):

Jo Ann Brockway

Keyword(s):

Healthy Aging ◽

The Difference

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Gait Analysis under Spatial Navigation Task in Elderly People—A Pilot Study

Sensors ◽

10.3390/s21010270 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 21 (1) ◽

pp. 270

Author(s):

Natalia Pawlaczyk ◽

Magdalena Szmytke ◽

Michał Meina ◽

Monika Lewandowska ◽

Justyna Stępniak ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Healthy Aging ◽

Spatial Navigation ◽

The Elderly ◽

Young Group ◽

Operating Characteristics ◽

Important Indicator ◽

Gait Parameters ◽

Memory Phase ◽

The Difference ◽

Delayed Phase

A decline in the Spatial Navigation (SN) abilities has been observed in the course of healthy aging. Walking is an inseparable part of the navigation process; however, research tasks overlook this aspect in studies involving seniors. The present study was designed to overcome this limitation by recording gait parameters during natural environment navigation and to determine gait indicators that most accurately assign the participants to the proper age category. Thirteen elderly (mean age = 69.1 ± 5.4 year) and sixteen young women (mean age = 21.5 ± 2.2 year) equipped with gait sensors were asked to learn a path while walking in a real building (Learning Phase), reproduce the path (Memory Phase) and reach targets after a 30 min delay (Delayed Phase). The Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) analysis showed that our self-developed Gait Style Change indicator, that is, the difference in the probability of feet landing between particular SN task phases, classified the participants into either the elderly or the young group with the highest accuracy (0.91). The second most important indicator, the Task-Related (step counts in each SN task phase), achieved the accuracy discrimination of 0.83. The gait indicators, comprising single gait parameters measured while navigating, might be considered as accurately differentiating older from younger people.

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Age-related declines in neural distinctiveness correlate across brain areas and result from both decreased reliability and increased confusability

10.1101/2021.06.28.449009 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Molly Simmonite ◽

Thad A Polk

Keyword(s):

Neural Activity ◽

Healthy Aging ◽

Brain Regions ◽

Aging Brain ◽

Activation Patterns ◽

Neural Representations ◽

Age Related ◽

Behavioural Performance ◽

The Difference ◽

The Brain

According to the neural dedifferentiation hypothesis, age-related reductions in the distinctiveness of neural representations contribute to sensory, cognitive, and motor declines associated with aging: neural activity associated with different stimulus categories becomes more confusable with age and behavioural performance suffers as a result. Initial studies investigated age-related dedifferentiation in the visual cortex, but subsequent research has revealed declines in other brain regions, suggesting that dedifferentiation may be a general feature of the aging brain. In the present study, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate age-related dedifferentiation in the visual, auditory, and motor cortices. Participants were 58 young adults and 79 older adults. The similarity of activation patterns across different blocks of the same condition was calculated (within-condition correlation, a measure of reliability) as was the similarity of activation patterns elicited by different conditions (between-category correlations, a measure of confusability). Neural distinctiveness was defined as the difference between the mean within- and between-condition similarity. We found age-related reductions in neural distinctiveness in the visual, auditory, and motor cortices, which were driven by both decreases in within-category similarity and increases in between-category similarity. There were significant positive cross-region correlations between neural distinctiveness in different regions. These correlations were driven by within-category similarities, a finding that indicates that declines in the reliability of neural activity appear to occur in tandem across the brain. These findings suggest that the changes in neural distinctiveness that occur in healthy aging result from changes in both the reliability and confusability of patterns of neural activity.

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Epigenetic age is associated with baseline and 3-year change in frailty in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging

Clinical Epigenetics ◽

10.1186/s13148-021-01150-1 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (1) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Chris P. Verschoor ◽

David T. S. Lin ◽

Michael S. Kobor ◽

Oxana Mian ◽

Jinhui Ma ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Longitudinal Study ◽

Healthy Aging ◽

Frailty Index ◽

Sociodemographic Factors ◽

Chronological Age ◽

Short Term ◽

Epigenetic Age ◽

Health Related ◽

The Difference ◽

Using Data

Abstract Background The trajectory of frailty in older adults is important to public health; therefore, markers that may help predict this and other important outcomes could be beneficial. Epigenetic clocks have been developed and are associated with various health-related outcomes and sociodemographic factors, but associations with frailty are poorly described. Further, it is uncertain whether newer generations of epigenetic clocks, trained on variables other than chronological age, would be more strongly associated with frailty than earlier developed clocks. Using data from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA), we tested the hypothesis that clocks trained on phenotypic markers of health or mortality (i.e., Dunedin PoAm, GrimAge, PhenoAge and Zhang in Nat Commun 8:14617, 2017) would best predict changes in a 76-item frailty index (FI) over a 3-year interval, as compared to clocks trained on chronological age (i.e., Hannum in Mol Cell 49:359–367, 2013, Horvath in Genome Biol 14:R115, 2013, Lin in Aging 8:394–401, 2016, and Yang Genome Biol 17:205, 2016). Results We show that in 1446 participants, phenotype/mortality-trained clocks outperformed age-trained clocks with regard to the association with baseline frailty (mean = 0.141, SD = 0.075), the greatest of which is GrimAge, where a 1-SD increase in ΔGrimAge (i.e., the difference from chronological age) was associated with a 0.020 increase in frailty (95% CI 0.016, 0.024), or ~ 27% relative to the SD in frailty. Only GrimAge and Hannum (Mol Cell 49:359–367, 2013) were significantly associated with change in frailty over time, where a 1-SD increase in ΔGrimAge and ΔHannum 2013 was associated with a 0.0030 (95% CI 0.0007, 0.0050) and 0.0028 (95% CI 0.0007, 0.0050) increase over 3 years, respectively, or ~ 7% relative to the SD in frailty change. Conclusion Both prevalence and change in frailty are associated with increased epigenetic age. However, not all clocks are equally sensitive to these outcomes and depend on their underlying relationship with chronological age, healthspan and lifespan. Certain clocks were significantly associated with relatively short-term changes in frailty, thereby supporting their utility in initiatives and interventions to promote healthy aging.

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Transcriptome analysis reveals the difference between “healthy” and “common” aging and their connection with age-related diseases

10.1101/747956 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Lu Zeng ◽

Jialiang Yang ◽

Shouneng Peng ◽

Jun Zhu ◽

Bin Zhang ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Healthy Aging ◽

Tissue Expression ◽

Disease Genes ◽

Gene Expressions ◽

Protective Mechanisms ◽

Aging Research ◽

Age Related ◽

The Difference ◽

Project Data ◽

Gene Regulations

AbstractA key goal of aging research is to understand mechanisms underlying healthy aging and use them to develop methods to promote the human healthspan. One approach is to identify gene regulations differentiating healthy aging from aging in the general population (i.e., “common” aging). In this study, we leveraged GTEx (Genotype-Tissue Expression) project data to investigate “healthy” and “common” aging in humans and their interconnection with diseases.We selected GTEx donors who were not annotated with diseases to approximate a “healthy” aging cohort. We then compared the age-associated genes derived from this cohort with age-associated genes from our “common” aging cohort which included all GTEx donors; we also compared the “healthy” and “common” aging gene expressions with various disease-associated gene expression to elucidate the relationships among “healthy”, “common” aging and disease. Our analyses showed that 1. “healthy” and “common” aging shared a large number of gene regulations; 2. Despite the substantial commonality, “healthy” and “common” aging genes also showed distinct function enrichment, and “common” aging genes had a higher enrichment for disease genes; 3. Disease-associated gene regulations were overall different from aging gene regulations. However, for genes regulated by both, their regulation directions were largely consistent, implying some aging processes could increase the susceptibility to disease development; and 4. Possible protective mechanisms were associated with the “healthy” aging gene regulations.In summary, our work highlights several unique features of human “healthy” aging program. This new knowledge can be used for the development of therapeutics to promote human healthspan.

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High Anemia Prevalence in Korean Older Adults, an Urgent Healthcare Problem: 2007-2016 KNHANES

10.21203/rs.3.rs-33925/v1 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Hee won Chueh ◽

Hye Lim Jung ◽

Ye Jee Shim ◽

Hyoung Soo Choi ◽

Jin Yeong Han

Keyword(s):

Older Adults ◽

Older People ◽

Healthy Aging ◽

High Morbidity ◽

Older Individuals ◽

Cross Sectional ◽

Female Sex ◽

Increased Risk ◽

Potential Risk Factors ◽

The Difference

Abstract BACKGROUND: Anemia is associated with high morbidity and mortality in older people. However, anemia in older individuals is not fully understood, and national data on the prevalence and characteristics of anemia in Korean older people are lacking. This study aimed to evaluate the prevalence and characteristics of anemia in older adults using data from the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES) , which is the nation-wide cross-sectional epidemiological study conducted by Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare. METHODS: Data from the total of 62,825 participants of the 2007-2016 KNHANES were merged and analyzed to investigate differences in participant characteristics and potential risk factors for anemia. RESULTS: The prevalence of anemia was higher in the population aged ≥65 years (older adults) than in the younger population. Anemia was also more prevalent among females than among males, but the difference was not statistically significant in people aged >85 years. Being underweight, receiving a social allowance, living alone, and having comorbidities such as hypertension, arthritis, diabetes mellitus (DM), cardiovascular disease (CVD), stroke, cancer, and chronic renal failure (CRF) were more prevalent in older adults with anemia than in the group without anemia. In the univariate and multivariate analyses, older age, female sex, underweight, and comorbidities including arthritis, DM, CVD, stroke, cancer, and CRF were associated with an increased risk of anemia. Furthermore, the prevalence data were significantly higher in this study than in previous studies. CONCLUSIONS: This study revealed that age, female sex, underweight, and the presence of comorbidities such as arthritis, DM, CVD, stroke, cancer, and CRF were associated with an increased risk of anemia in Korean older adults. Our findings may be useful in developing interventions and programs aimed at healthy aging. Further study on causal relationships between anemia and other variables in the older population is necessary.

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Motor Preparation of Manual Aiming at a Visual Target Manipulated in Size, Luminance Contrast, and Location

Perception ◽

10.1068/p5776 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 36 (9) ◽

pp. 1375-1390 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

Masami Ishihara ◽

Kuniyasu Imanaka

Keyword(s):

Left Visual Field ◽

Target Location ◽

Visual Target ◽

Task Complexity ◽

Motor Preparation ◽

Luminance Contrast ◽

Manual Aiming ◽

Left Hand ◽

The Difference ◽

The Right

We conducted two experiments to investigate whether the motor preparation of manual aiming to a visual target is affected by either the physical characteristics (size or luminance contrast) or spatial characteristics (location) of the target. Reaction time (RT) of both finger lifting (ie stimulus-detection time) and manual aiming (ie movement-triggering time) to the onset of the target was measured. The difference of RT (DRT) between two tasks (ie the difference of task complexity) was examined to clarify the temporal characteristics of manual aiming per se during visuomotor integration. Results show classical characteristics: RT decreased as either the target size or luminance contrast increased. Furthermore, the task-complexity and target-location factors significantly interacted with each other, where the aiming RT was longer than the finger-lifting RT and the effects of target location on RT differed for each task. However, the task factor did not interact with either the size or luminance-contrast factor, implying that the motor preparation of manual aiming is associated with the spatial characteristics rather than the physical characteristics of the target. Inspection of DRT revealed that the time needed for motor preparation for an ipsilateral target was significantly shorter than that for a contralateral target. This was the case both for the left and for the right hand. Foveal targets required longer processing time, implying a disadvantageous function of motor preparation for the gazed target. The left-hand superiority for the target appearing in the left visual field was also observed. Such lateralised effect and left-hand advantage to the left visual field in manual aiming suggest that visuospatial information processing is activated during the preparation of aiming action, with faster processing in the right hemisphere.

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Optimal Approaches for Measuring Tongue-Pressure Functional Reserve

Journal of Aging Research ◽

10.1155/2013/542909 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 2013 ◽

pp. 1-7 ◽

Cited By ~ 18

Author(s):

Catriona M. Steele

Keyword(s):

Healthy Aging ◽

Healthy Adults ◽

Tongue Pressure ◽

Pressure Data ◽

Functional Reserve ◽

The Difference ◽

Optimal Approach ◽

The Impact ◽

The Relationship ◽

Optimal Measure

Tongue-palate pressure is a parameter of considerable interest in the field of dysphagia. Maximum isometric tongue-palate pressures (MIPs) decline in healthy aging and in dysphagia. Functional reserve (FR) is the difference between MIPs and swallowing pressures. Reduced FR is thought to constitute a risk for developing functional swallowing impairments. We compare different approaches for calculating FR and recommend an optimal approach. Tongue-palate pressure data were collected from 78 healthy adults (40<age 40;38>60) during anterior and posterior MIPs, regular (RESS) and effortful (ESS) saliva swallows, and water swallows (4 repetitions per task). Six different measures of reserve were calculated using maximum anterior MIPs or ESS pressures at the top, and mean or maximum RESS or water swallow pressures at the bottom of the range. Correlations with age and MIPs were explored to confirm suitability for measuring FR. The impact of normalization to maximum MIP range was explored. We conclude that an optimal measure of FR involves the comparison of maximum MIP with mean saliva swallowing pressures. This parameter declines with age, but when normalized to an individual’s MIP range, the relationship is no longer evident. This suggests that FR does not necessarily decline in healthy aging.

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The Origin of the Moon

Symposium - International Astronomical Union ◽

10.1017/s0074180900178209 ◽

1962 ◽

Vol 14 ◽

pp. 149-155 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

E. L. Ruskol

Keyword(s):

Chemical Composition ◽

Solar System ◽

The Moon ◽

The Earth ◽

The Difference ◽

Origin Of The Moon

The difference between average densities of the Moon and Earth was interpreted in the preceding report by Professor H. Urey as indicating a difference in their chemical composition. Therefore, Urey assumes the Moon's formation to have taken place far away from the Earth, under conditions differing substantially from the conditions of Earth's formation. In such a case, the Earth should have captured the Moon. As is admitted by Professor Urey himself, such a capture is a very improbable event. In addition, an assumption that the “lunar” dimensions were representative of protoplanetary bodies in the entire solar system encounters great difficulties.

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