The Dependency of Parietal Activation on Visuospacial Operation Performance in the Elderly – An Event-Related fMRI Study
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1
National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology, NeuroImaging & Informatics, Japan
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2
Kobe University, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Japan
It has been proposed that physical exercises can assist cognitive recovery in the elderly [1], however, their effectiveness has been controversial [2]. The backgrounds of this discrepancy may be heterogeneity of the populations studied and various exercise protocols employed. In order to clarify the conditions to predict validity of physical exercises, it is desirable to establish a method to classify the subjects based on their cognitive and physiological status. For this evaluation, the neuronal basis of the tasks used in the exercises should be clarified. We investigated the availability of a virtual performance task designed from exercises for the elderly as a model to test age-related changes in brain function.
Twenty-four elderly (over 60, 12 females) and 24 non-elderly (20 - 54, 12 females) healthy volunteers participated in an event-related fMRI experiment simulating the visuo-motor transformation of bean transfer test (BTT), one of the physical test batteries for elderly [3]. Functional data were obtained by using a 3T-MR scanner (TR = 3000 ms, TE = 30 ms, 39 axial slices, 3 mm thick, 0.75 mm gap, matrix = 64 x 64, FOV = 192 mm, BW = 1420 Hz/Px, 128 volumes), and the reaction time in each trial were recorded at 6 points by synchronizing to the TTL signal from the MR scanner. The functional images were processed using SPM8.
It was indicated that the activations representing the whole trial of virtual BTT (VBTT) were contributed by different steps in each age group. In young subjects, major activations were detected at CP0 (bean appearance), CP1 (start clipping) and CP4 (finish transferring), while they were detected at CP0 and CP2 (finish clipping) in the elderly subjects. Activations in the left BA 3, 5, 6, 40, 43 and the right BA7 were significantly augmented in the elderly group at CP2 (FEW, p< 0.05). Within the elderly subjects, further activations in the left BA5 and right BA7 were augmented in the higher bean clipping performance group (12 subjects, FDR, p< 0.001) at CP2. However, no augmentation of brain activations was detected in the higher bean transfer performance group in contrast to the lower performance group at CP2, 3 (start transfer) or 4.
The activations were not significantly different between the two age groups when the contrasts obtained from the whole trial were compared. By using partitioning analysis employing accurate response times for each step of VBTT, differential activations characteristic to the two age groups could be extracted. In conclusion, it was suggested that the relationship between performance of visuo-spatial operation and parietal activation may be a potential indicator of functional compensation capability in the elderly depending on further neuronal recruitment.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI) # 21300196 and 24300186 supported by MEXT.
References
[1] Geda YE et al., Arch Neurol 67, 80-86, 2010
[2] Gates N et al., Am J Geriatr Psychiatry 21, 1086-97, 2013
[3] Nakai T et al., Neuroinformatics 2013 .doi: 10.3389/conf.fninf.2013.09.00017
Keywords:
fMRI,
Aging,
Visuospatial Transformation,
bean transfer test,
physical exercise
Conference:
Neuroinformatics 2014, Leiden, Netherlands, 25 Aug - 27 Aug, 2014.
Presentation Type:
Poster, to be considered for oral presentation
Topic:
Neuroimaging
Citation:
Nakai
T,
Kunimi
M,
Kiyama
S,
Tanaka
A and
Shiraishi
Y
(2014). The Dependency of Parietal Activation on Visuospacial Operation Performance in the Elderly – An Event-Related fMRI Study.
Front. Neuroinform.
Conference Abstract:
Neuroinformatics 2014.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fninf.2014.18.00012
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Received:
04 Apr 2014;
Published Online:
04 Jun 2014.
*
Correspondence:
Prof. Toshiharu Nakai, National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology, NeuroImaging & Informatics, Ohbu, Aichi, 474-8522, Japan, nakai.iniinf@gmail.com