Quantification of physiological kinetic tremor and its correlation with aging

Area of Science:

• Neurology
• Biomedical Engineering
• Gerontology

Background:

• Physiological tremor, characterized by repetitive movements, is the most prevalent movement disorder.
• Kinetic tremor, specifically, is assessed through voluntary hand-drawing movements, often using tasks like drawing Archimedes' spirals.
• While neuromuscular dysfunction is often studied, the relationship between physiological tremor and aging, particularly in kinetic conditions, remains less explored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To generalize findings on age-related kinetic tremor quantification in clinically healthy individuals.
• To investigate the complex relationship between physiological kinetic tremor and the aging process.

Main Methods:

• Digitized drawings of Archimedes' spirals were used to collect tremor data under kinetic conditions.
• Extracted tremor activity features were analyzed following linearization, tremor estimation, and data pre-processing.
• Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA), as previously described, was applied to the extracted features.

Main Results:

• The study successfully generalized previous findings on age-related kinetic tremor.
• The LDA-based method demonstrated a linear correlation between physiological kinetic tremor and aging.

Conclusions:

• The applied methodology, utilizing LDA, effectively quantifies age-related changes in kinetic tremor.
• This approach provides a reliable method for assessing physiological kinetic tremor in the context of aging.