Reduced Modulation of Task-Related Connectivity Mediates Age-Related Declines in Bimanual Performance

Aging is accompanied by marked changes in motor behavior and its neural correlates. At the behavioral level, age-related declines in motor performance manifest, for example, as a reduced capacity to inhibit interference between hands during bimanual movements, particularly when task complexity increases. At the neural level, aging is associated with reduced differentiation between distinct functional systems. Functional connectivity (FC) dedifferentiation is characterized by more homogeneous connectivity patterns across various tasks or task conditions, reflecting a reduced ability of the aging adult to modulate brain activity according to changing task demands. It is currently unknown, however, how whole-brain dedifferentiation interacts with increasing task complexity. In the present study, we investigated age- and task-related FC in a group of 96 human adults across a wide age range (19.9-74.5 years of age) during the performance of a bimanual coordination task of varying complexity. Our findings indicated stronger task complexity-related differentiation between visuomotor- and nonvisuomotor-related networks, though modulation capability decreased with increasing age. Decreased FC modulation mediated larger complexity-related increases in between-hand interference, reflective of worse bimanual coordination. Thus, the ability to maintain high motor performance levels in older adults is related to the capability to properly segregate and modulate functional networks.