Assessing age-related proprioceptive changes through active and passive tasks: implications for stroke assessment

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Gerontology
• Biomechanics

Background:

• Voluntary motor control relies on accurate proprioception and somatosensation.
• Aging impacts sensory processing, but its effects on proprioception, especially active upper-limb proprioception, are not well understood.
• Conflicting findings exist regarding age-related declines in passive proprioception.

Purpose of the Study:

• To refine and validate a robotic protocol for assessing upper-limb active proprioception.
• To compare active and passive proprioceptive performance in young versus elderly neurologically healthy adults.
• To investigate age-related changes in proprioceptive accuracy and precision.

Main Methods:

• Development and validation of a robust and reliable robotic protocol for upper-limb proprioception assessment.
• Comparison of active and passive proprioceptive task performance between young and elderly adult groups.
• Analysis of proprioceptive accuracy (correctness) and precision (variability).

Main Results:

• Elderly participants showed significantly reduced accuracy in sensing limb position during both active and passive tasks.
• Proprioceptive precision (variability) was not significantly different between age groups.
• Aging primarily affects the accuracy, not the variability, of proprioceptive sense.

Conclusions:

• Proprioceptive accuracy declines with age in both active and passive conditions.
• The findings underscore the importance of differentiating between active and passive proprioception when assessing age-related changes.
• The validated robotic protocol offers a reliable method for clinical assessment of proprioception in aging and neurological conditions.