Mental images across the adult lifespan: a behavioural and fMRI investigation of motor execution and motor imagery

Springer Science and Business Media LLC - Tập 224 - Trang 519-540 - 2012
L. Zapparoli1, P. Invernizzi1, M. Gandola2, M. Verardi1, M. Berlingeri1, M. Sberna3, A. De Santis4,5, A. Zerbi4, G. Banfi4,5, G. Bottini2,6, E. Paulesu1,4
1Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy
2Department of Humanistic Studies, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy
3Neuroradiology Department, Niguarda Ca’ Granda Hospital, Milan, Italy
4IRCCS Galeazzi, Milan, Italy
5University of Milano Statale, Milan, Italy
6Cognitive Neuropsychology Center, Niguarda Ca’ Granda Hospital, Milan, Italy

Tóm tắt

Motor imagery (M.I.) is a mental state in which real movements are evoked without overt actions. There is some behavioural evidence that M.I. declines with ageing. The neurofunctional correlates of these changes have been investigated only in two studies, but none of the these studies has measured explicit correlations between behavioural variables and the brain response, nor the correlation of M.I. and motor execution (M.E.) of the same acts in ageing. In this paper, we report a behavioural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment that aimed to address this issue. Twenty-four young subjects (27 ± 5.6 years) and twenty-four elderly subjects (60 ± 4.6 years) performed two block-design fMRI tasks requiring actual movement (M.E.) or the mental rehearsal (M.I.) of finger movements. Participants also underwent a behavioural mental chronometry test in which the temporal correlations between M.I. and M.E. were measured. We found significant neurofunctional and behavioural differences between the elderly subjects and the young subjects during the M.E. and the M.I. tasks: for the M.E. task, the elderly subjects showed increased activation in frontal and prefrontal (pre-SMA) cortices as if M.E. had become more cognitively demanding; during the M.I. task, the elderly over-recruited occipito-temporo-parietal areas, suggesting that they may also use a visual imagery strategy. We also found between-group behavioural differences in the mental chronometry task: M.I. and M.E. were highly correlated in the young participants but not in the elderly participants. The temporal discrepancy between M.I. and M.E. in the elderly subjects correlated with the brain regions that showed increased activation in the occipital lobe in the fMRI. The same index was correlated with the premotor regions in the younger subjects. These observations show that healthy elderly individuals have decreased or qualitatively different M.I. compared to younger subjects.

Tài liệu tham khảo

Ashburner J, Friston K (1999) Nonlinear spatial normalization using basis functions. Hum Brain Mapp 7(4):254–266 Bartolomeo P (2008) The neural correlates of visual mental imagery: an ongoing debate. Cortex 44(2):107–108 Berlingeri M, Bottini G, Danelli L, Ferri F, Traficante D, Sacheli L, Colombo N, Sberna M, Sterzi R, Scialfa G, Paulesu E (2010) With time on our side? Task-dependent compensatory processes in graceful aging. Exp Brain Res 205(3):307–324 Bonda E, Petrides M, Ostry D, Evans A (1996) Specific involvement of human parietal systems and the amygdala in the perception of biological motion. J Neurosci 16:3737–3744 Buckner RL (2004) Memory and executive function in aging and AD: multiple factors that cause decline and reserve factors that compensate. Neuron 44(1):195–208 Cabeza R (2002) Hemispheric asymmetry reduction in older adults: the HAROLD model. Psychol Aging 17(1):85–100 Cabeza R, Anderson ND, Locantore JK, McIntosh AR (2002) Aging gracefully: compensatory brain activity in high-performing older adults. Neuroimage 17(3):1394–1402 Calautti C, Serrati C, Baron JC (2001) Effects of age on brain activation during auditory-cued thumb-to-index opposition: a positron emission tomography study. Stroke 32(1):139–146 Carlesimo GA, Buccione I, Fadda L, Graceffa A, Mauri M, Lorusso S, Bevilacqua G et al (2002) Standardizzazione di due test di memoria per uso clinico: Breve Racconto e Figura di Rey. Nuova Riv Neurol 12:1–13 Catalan MJ, Honda M, Weeks RA, Cohen LG, Hallett M (1998) The functional neuroanatomy of simple and complex sequential finger movements: a PET study. Brain 121(2):253–264 Chan RC, Huang J, Di X (2009) Dexterous movement complexity and cerebellar activation: a meta-analysis. Brain Res Rev 59(2):316–323 Coats RO, Wann JP (2011) The reliance on visual feedback control by older adults is highlighted in tasks requiring precise endpoint placement and precision grip. Exp Brain Res 214(1):139–150 Conson M, Sacco S, Sarà M, Pistoia F, Grossi D, Trojano L (2008) Selective motor imagery defect in patients with locked-in syndrome. Neuropsychologia 46(11):2622–2628 Davis SW, Dennis NA, Daselaar SM, Fleck MS, Cabeza R (2008) Que PASA? The posterior–anterior shift in aging. Cereb Cortex 18(5):1201–1209 de Lange FP, Hagoort P, Toni I (2005) Neural topography and content of movement representations. J Cogn Neurosci 17(1):97–112 Deblieck C, Pesenti G, Scifo P, Fazio F, Bricolo E, Lo Russo G, Scialfa G, Cossu M, Bottini G, Paulesu E (2003) Preserved functional competence of perilesional areas in drug-resistant epilepsy with lesion in supplementary motor cortex: fMRI and neuropsychological observations. Neuroimage 20(4):2225–2234 Decety J (1996) The neurophysiological basis of motor imagery. Behav Brain Res 77(1–2):45–52 Decety J, Jeannerod M (1995) Mentally simulated movements in virtual reality: does Fitts’s law hold in motor imagery? Behav Brain Res 72(1–2):127–134 Decety J, Jeannerod M, Prablanc C (1989) The timing of mentally represented actions. Behav Brain Res 34(1–2):35–42 Deiber MP, Ibanez V, Honda M, Sadato N, Raman R, Hallett M (1998) Cerebral processes related to visuomotor imagery and generation of simple finger movements studied with positron emission tomography. Neuroimage 7(2):73–85. doi:10.1006/nimg.1997.0314 Dickstein R, Deutsch JE (2007) Motor imagery in physical therapist practice. Phys Ther 87(7):942–953 Folstein MF, Folstein SE, McHugh PR (1975) "Mini-mental state". A practical method for grading the cognitive state of patients for the clinician. J Psychiatr Res 12(3):189–198 Friston K, Ashburner J, Frith C, Poline J, Heather J, Frackowiak RSJ (1995) Spatial registration and normalization of images. Hum Brain Mapp 2:165–189 Friston K, Holmes A, Price C, Buchel C, Worsley K (1999) Multisubject fMRI studies and conjunction analyses. NeuroImage 10(4):385–396 Ganis G, Thompson WL, Kosslyn SM (2004) Brain areas underlying visual mental imagery and visual perception: an fMRI study. Brain Res Cogn Brain Res 20(2):226–241 Georgopoulos AP, Massey JT (1987) Cognitive spatial-motor processes. 1. The making of movements at various angles from a stimulus direction. Exp Brain Res 65(2):361–370 Gerardin E, Sirigu A, Lehéricy S, Poline JB, Gaymard B, Marsault C, Agid Y, Le Bihan D (2000) Partially overlapping neural networks for real and imagined hand movements. Cereb Cortex 10(11):1093–1104 Giovagnoli AR, Del Pesce M, Mascheroni S, Simoncelli M, Laiacona M, Capitani E (1996) Trail making test: normative values from 287 normal adult controls. Ital J Neurol Sci 17(4):305–309 Grady CL, Maisog JM, Horwitz B, Ungerleider LG, Mentis MJ, Salerno JA, Pietrini P, Wagner E, Haxby JV (1994) Age-related changes in cortical blood flow activation during visual processing of faces and location. J Neurosci 14(3 Pt 2):1450–1462 Grezes J, Costes N, Decety J (1998) Top-down effect of strategy on the perception of human biological motion: a PET investigation. Cogn Neuropsychol 15:553–582 Guillot A, Collet C (2005) Duration of mentally simulated movement: a review. J Mot Behav 37(1):10–20. doi:10.3200/JMBR.37.1.10-20 Guillot A, Collet C, Nguyen VA, Malouin F, Richards C, Doyon J (2009) Brain activity during visual versus kinesthetic imagery: an fMRI study. Hum Brain Mapp 30(7):2157–2172 Hanakawa T, Immisch I, Toma K, Dimyan M, Van Gelderen P, Hallett M (2003) Functional properties of brain areas associated with motor execution and imagery. J Neurophysiol 89(2):989–1002 Heuninckx S, Wenderoth N, Debaere F, Peeters R, Swinnen SP (2005) Neural basis of aging: the penetration of cognition into action control. J Neurosci 25(29):6787–6796 Hodzic A, Muckli L, Singer W, Stirn A (2009) Cortical responses to self and others. Hum Brain Mapp 30(3):951–962. doi:10.1002/hbm.20558 Holmes A, Friston K (1998) Generalisability, random effects and population inference. NeuroImage 7:S754 Hovington CL, Brouwer B (2010) Guided motor imagery in healthy adults and stroke: does strategy matter? Neurorehabil Neural Repair 24(9):851–857 Hutchinson S, Kobayashi M, Horkan CM, Pascual-Leone A, Alexander MP, Schlaug G (2002) Age-related differences in movement representation. Neuroimage 17(4):1720–1728 Hutsler J, Galuske RA (2003) Hemispheric asymmetries in cerebral cortical networks. Trends Neurosci 26(8):429–435. doi:10.1016/S0166-2236(03)00198-X Ietswaart M, Johnston M, Dijkerman HC, Joice S, Scott CL, MacWalter RS, Hamilton SJ (2011) Mental practice with motor imagery in stroke recovery: randomized controlled trial of efficacy. Brain 134(Pt 5):1373–1386 Ishai A, Ungerleider LG, Haxby JV (2000) Distributed neural systems for the generation of visual images. Neuron 28(3):979–990 Jackson PL, Doyon J, Richards CL, Malouin F (2004) The efficacy of combined physical and mental practice in the learning of a foot-sequence task after stroke: a case report. Neurorehabil Neural Repair 18(2):106–111 Jeannerod M (2001) Neural simulation of action: a unifying mechanism for motor cognition. Neuroimage 14(1 Pt 2):S103–S109 Jeannerod M, Decety J (1995) Mental motor imagery: a window into the representational stages of action. Curr Opin Neurobiol 5(6):727–732 Jeannerod M, Frak V (1999) Mental imaging of motor activity in humans. Curr Opin Neurobiol 9(6):735–739 Johnson-Frey SH (2004) Stimulation through simulation? Motor imagery and functional reorganization in hemiplegic stroke patients. Brain Cogn 55(2):328–331 Kalisch T, Ragert P, Schwenkreis P, Dinse HR, Tegenthoff M (2009) Impaired tactile acuity in old age is accompanied by enlarged hand representations in somatosensory cortex. Cereb Cortex 19(7):1530–1538 Kauranen K, Vanharanta H (1996) Influences of aging, gender, and handedness on motor performance of upper and lower extremities. Percept Mot Skills 82(2):515–525 Kosslyn SM, Thompson WL, Kim IJ, Alpert NM (1995) Topographical representations of mental images in primary visual cortex. Nature 378(6556):496–498 Kosslyn SM, Pascual-Leone A, Felician O, Camposano S, Keenan JP, Thompson WL, Ganis G, Sukel KE, Alpert NM (1999) The role of area 17 in visual imagery: convergent evidence from PET and rTMS. Science 284(5411):167–170 Lafleur MF, Jackson PL, Malouin F, Richards CL, Evans AC, Doyon J (2002) Motor learning produces parallel dynamic functional changes during the execution and imagination of sequential foot movements. Neuroimage 16(1):142–157. doi:10.1006/nimg.2001.1048 Lau HC, Rogers RD, Haggard P, Passingham RE (2004) Attention to intention. Science 303(5661):1208–1210 Lenz M, Tegenthoff M, Kohlhaas K, Stude P, Hoffken O, Gatica Tossi MA, Kalisch T, Dinse HR (2012) Increased excitability of somatosensory cortex in aged humans is associated with impaired tactile acuity. J Neurosci 32(5):1811–1816 Leonard G, Tremblay F (2007) Corticomotor facilitation associated with observation, imagery and imitation of hand actions: a comparative study in young and old adults. Exp Brain Res 177(2):167–175 Liu KP, Chan CC, Lee TM, Hui-Chan CW (2004) Mental imagery for relearning of people after brain injury. Brain Inj 18(11):1163–1172 Lotze M, Cohen LG (2006) Volition and imagery in neurorehabilitation. Cogn Behav Neurol 19(3):135–140 Lulé D, Diekmann V, Kassubek J, Kurt A, Birbaumer N, Ludolph AC, Kraft E (2007) Cortical plasticity in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: motor imagery and function. Neurorehabil Neural Repair 21(6):518–526 Lumer ED, Friston KJ, Rees G (1998) Neural correlates of perceptual rivalry in the human brain. Science 280(5371):1930–1934 Malouin F, Richards CL, Doyon J, Desrosiers J, Belleville S (2004) Training mobility tasks after stroke with combined mental and physical practice: a feasibility study. Neurorehabil Neural Repair 18(2):66–75 Malouin F, Richards CL, Durand A (2010) Normal aging and motor imagery vividness: implications for mental practice training in rehabilitation. Arch Phys Med Rehabil 91(7):1122–1127 Mattay VS, Fera F, Tessitore A, Hariri AR, Das S, Callicott JH, Weinberger DR (2002) Neurophysiological correlates of age-related changes in human motor function. Neurology 58(4):630–635 Mellet E, Petit L, Mazoyer B, Denis M, Tzourio N (1998) Reopening the mental imagery debate: lessons from functional anatomy. Neuroimage 8(2):129–139 Mendola JD, Dale AM, Fischl B, Liu AK, Tootell RB (1999) The representation of illusory and real contours in human cortical visual areas revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging. J Neurosci 19(19):8560–8572 Mulder T (2007) Motor imagery and action observation: cognitive tools for rehabilitation. J Neural Transm 114(10):1265–1278 Mulder T, Hochstenbach JB, van Heuvelen MJ, den Otter AR (2007) Motor imagery: the relation between age and imagery capacity. Hum Mov Sci 26(2):203–211 Nachev P, Kennard C, Husain M (2008) Functional role of the supplementary and pre-supplementary motor areas. Nat Rev Neurosci 9(11):856–869 Nedelko V, Hassa T, Hamzei F, Weiller C, Binkofski F, Schoenfeld MA, Tüscher O, Dettmers C (2010) Age-independent activation in areas of the mirror neuron system during action observation and action imagery. A fMRI study. Restor Neurol Neurosci 28(6):737–747 Novelli G, Papagno C, Capitani E, Laiacona M, Vallar G, Cappa SF (1986) Three clinical tests for the assessment of verbal long-term memory function: norms from 320 normal subjects. Arch Psicol Neurol Psichiatr 47:278–296 O’Craven KM, Kanwisher N (2000) Mental imagery of faces and places activates corresponding stiimulus-specific brain regions. J Cogn Neurosci 12(6):1013–1023 Oldfield RC (1971) The assessment and analysis of handedness: the Edinburgh inventory. Neuropsychologia 9(1):97–113 Orsini A, Grossi D, Capitani E, Laiacona M, Papagno C, Vallar G (1987) Verbal and spatial immediate memory span: normative data from 1355 adults and 1112 children. Ital J Neurol Sci 8(6):539–548 Owen AM, Coleman MR, Boly M, Davis MH, Laureys S, Pickard JD (2006) Detecting awareness in the vegetative state. Science 313(5792):1402 Page SJ, Levine P, Sisto S, Johnston MV (2001) A randomized efficacy and feasibility study of imagery in acute stroke. Clin Rehabil 15(3):233–240 Park DC, Reuter-Lorenz P (2009) The adaptive brain: aging and neurocognitive scaffolding. Annu Rev Psychol 60:173–196 Pascual-Leone A, Nguyet D, Cohen LG, Brasil-Neto JP, Cammarota A, Hallett M (1995) Modulation of muscle responses evoked by transcranial magnetic stimulation during the acquisition of new fine motor skills. J Neurophysiol 74(3):1037–1045 Penny W, Holmes AP (2004) Random-effects analysis. In: Frackowiak RJS et al. (eds) Human brain function. Elsevier, San Diego, pp 843–850 Personnier P, Paizis C, Ballay Y, Papaxanthis C (2008) Mentally represented motor actions in normal aging II. The influence of the gravito-inertial context on the duration of overt and covert arm movements. Behav Brain Res 186(2):273–283 Personnier P, Ballay Y, Papaxanthis C (2010a) Mentally represented motor actions in normal aging: III. Electromyographic features of imagined arm movements. Behav Brain Res 206(2):184–191 Personnier P, Kubicki A, Laroche D, Papaxanthis C (2010b) Temporal features of imagined locomotion in normal aging. Neurosci Lett 476(3):146–149 Phothisonothai M, Nakagawa M (2009) A classification method of different motor imagery tasks based on fractal features for brain-machine interface. J Integr Neurosci 8(1):95–122 Raven J (1984) CPM. Coloured Progressive Matrices. OS, Firenze Rizzolatti G, Craighero L (2004) The mirror-neuron system. Annu Rev Neurosci 27:169–192 Saimpont A, Pozzo T, Papaxanthis C (2009) Aging affects the mental rotation of left and right hands. PLoS One 4(8):e6714 Saxe R, Jamal N, Powell L (2006) My body or yours? The effect of visual perspective on cortical body representations. Cereb Cortex 16(2):178–182. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhi095 Seghier ML (2008) Laterality index in functional MRI: methodological issues. Magn Reson Imaging 26(5):594–601. doi:10.1016/j.mri.2007.10.010 Sereno MI, McDonald CT, Allman JM (1994) Analysis of retinotopic maps in extrastriate cortex. Cereb Cortex 4(6):601–620 Sirigu A, Duhamel JR, Cohen L, Pillon B, Dubois B, Agid Y (1996) The mental representation of hand movements after parietal cortex damage. Science 273(5281):1564–1568 Skoura X, Papaxanthis C, Vinter A, Pozzo T (2005) Mentally represented motor actions in normal aging. I. Age effects on the temporal features of overt and covert execution of actions. Behav Brain Res 165(2):229–239 Skoura X, Personnier P, Vinter A, Pozzo T, Papaxanthis C (2008) Decline in motor prediction in elderly subjects: right versus left arm differences in mentally simulated motor actions. Cortex 44(9):1271–1278 Smith CD, Umberger GH, Manning EL, Slevin JT, Wekstein DR, Schmitt FA, Markesbery WR, Zhang Z, Gerhardt GA, Kryscio RJ, Gash DM (1999) Critical decline in fine motor hand movements in human aging. Neurology 53(7):1458–1461 Spinnler H, Tognoni G (1987) Standardizzazione e taratura italiana di test neuropsicologici. Masson Italia Periodici, Milano Stenekes MW, Geertzen JH, Nicolai JP, De Jong BM, Mulder T (2009) Effects of motor imagery on hand function during immobilization after flexor tendon repair. Arch Phys Med Rehabil 90(4):553–559 Stephan KM, Fink GR, Passingham RE, Silbersweig D, Ceballos-Baumann AO, Frith CD, Frackowiak RS (1995) Functional anatomy of the mental representation of upper extremity movements in healthy subjects. J Neurophysiol 73(1):373–386 Stevens JA (2005) Interference effects demonstrate distinct roles for visual and motor imagery during the mental representation of human action. Cognition 95(3):329–350 Strauss E, Kosaka B, Wada J (1983) The neurobiological basis of lateralized cerebral function. A review. Hum Neurobiol 2(3):115–127 Vogt S (1995) On relations between perceiving, imagining and performing in the learning of cyclical movement sequences. Br J Psychol 86(Pt 2):191–216 Ward NS, Frackowiak RS (2003) Age-related changes in the neural correlates of motor performance. Brain 126(Pt 4):873–888 Wechsler D (1945) A standardized memory scale for clinical use. J Psychol 19:87–95 Witt ST, Laird AR, Meyerand ME (2008) Functional neuroimaging correlates of finger-tapping task variations: an ALE meta-analysis. Neuroimage 42(1):343–356 Worsley K, Friston K (1995) Analysis of fMRI time-series revisited—again. NeuroImage 2:173–181 Worsley K, Friston K (2000) A test for a conjunction. Stat Probab Lett 47:135–140 Worsley K, Marrett S, Neelin P, Vandal A, Friston K, Evans A (1996) A unified statistical approach for determining significant voxels in images of cerebral activation. Hum Brain Mapp 4:58–73 Wu T, Hallett M (2005) The influence of normal human ageing on automatic movements. J Physiol 562(Pt 2):605–615 Yue G, Cole KJ (1992) Strength increases from the motor program: comparison of training with maximal voluntary and imagined muscle contractions. J Neurophysiol 67(5):1114–1123 Zeki S, Watson JD, Lueck CJ, Friston KJ, Kennard C, Frackowiak RS (1991) A direct demonstration of functional specialization in human visual cortex. J Neurosci 11(3):641–649 Zwergal A, Linn J, Xiong G, Brandt T, Strupp M, Jahn K (2012) Aging of human supraspinal locomotor and postural control in fMRI. Neurobiol Aging 33(6):1073–1084