Failure to engage spatial working memory contributes to age-related declines in visuomotor learning

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Motor Control

Background:

• Cognitive and motor learning abilities decline with age.
• Spatial working memory (SWM) is crucial for early motor learning.
• Age-related cognitive decline may underlie motor learning deficits.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if age-related SWM decline contributes to visuomotor adaptation deficits.
• To examine the neural mechanisms underlying age differences in visuomotor adaptation.
• To explore the relationship between SWM performance and brain activation during motor learning.

Main Methods:

• Young and older adults performed a visuomotor adaptation task and an SWM task.
• fMRI was used to measure brain activation during the SWM task.
• Correlation analyses examined the relationship between SWM, adaptation rate, and neural activation.

Main Results:

• Younger adults exhibited a steeper learning curve than older adults.
• Early adaptation rate correlated with SWM performance in young adults only.
• Neural activation during SWM overlapped with early adaptation in young but not older adults.
• Right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex activation during SWM predicted adaptation rate, controlling for age.

Conclusions:

• Deficits in engaging SWM contribute to age-related impairments in visuomotor adaptation.
• Age-related differences in neural engagement of SWM impact motor learning.
• The right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex plays a key role in SWM-dependent motor learning across the lifespan.