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Behavioral and neural correlates of normal aging effects on motor preparatory mechanisms of speech production and limb movement

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Abstract

Normal aging is associated with decline of the sensorimotor mechanisms that support movement function in the human brain. In this study, we used behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) recordings to investigate the effects of normal aging on the motor preparatory mechanisms of speech production and limb movement. The experiment involved two groups of older and younger adults who performed randomized speech vowel vocalization and button press motor reaction time tasks in response to temporally predictable and unpredictable visual stimuli. Behavioral results revealed age-related slowness of motor reaction time only during speech production in response to temporally unpredictable stimuli, and this effect was accompanied by increased pre-motor ERP activities in older vs. younger adults during the speech task. These results indicate that motor preparatory mechanisms of limb movement during button press are not affected by normal aging, whereas the functional capacity of these mechanisms is reduced in older adults during speech production in response to unpredictable sensory stimuli. These findings suggest that the aging brain selectively compromises the motor timing of speech and recruits additional neural resources for motor planning and execution of speech, as indexed by the increased pre-motor ERP activations in response to temporally unpredictable vs. predictable sensory stimuli.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Drs. Chris Rorden and Allen Montgomery for their feedback on this manuscript.

Funding

This research was supported by a Grant from the NIH/NIDCD, Grant Number: K01-DC015831 (PI: Behroozmand), and by the Graduate Scholar Award for Aging Research received by Karim Johari from the University of South Carolina. The funders had no role in study design, data collection, analysis, preparation of the manuscript, or decision to publish.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Speech Neuroscience Lab, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of South Carolina, 915 Greene Street, Columbia, SC, 29208, USA

    Karim Johari & Roozbeh Behroozmand

  2. Neurolinguistics Lab, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of South Carolina, 915 Greene St, Columbia, SC, 29208, USA

    Dirk-Bart den Ouden

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  1. Karim Johari
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Contributions

RB designed the research and KJ collected data for the experiments. KJ and RB analyzed the collected data. KJ, RB, and D-BO wrote the paper and all authors reviewed and approved the final draft.

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Correspondence to Roozbeh Behroozmand.

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The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial, financial, or non-financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Ethics statement

This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the University of South Carolina Institutional Review Board, with written informed consent from all subjects. All subjects gave written informed consent in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The protocol was approved by the University of South Carolina Institutional Review Board.

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Johari, K., den Ouden, DB. & Behroozmand, R. Behavioral and neural correlates of normal aging effects on motor preparatory mechanisms of speech production and limb movement. Exp Brain Res 237, 1759–1772 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-019-05549-4

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