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Visuotactile interaction even in far sagittal space in older adults with decreased gait and balance functions

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Abstract

Spatial proximity of signals from different sensory modalities is known to be a crucial factor in facilitating efficient multisensory processing in young adults. However, recent studies have demonstrated that older adults exhibit strong visuotactile interactions even when the visual stimuli were presented in a spatially disparate position from a tactile stimulus. This suggests that visuotactile peripersonal space differs between older and younger adults. In the present study, we investigated to what extent peripersonal space expands in the sagittal direction and whether this expansion was linked to the decline in sensorimotor functions in older adults. Vibrotactile stimuli were delivered either to the left or right index finger, while visual stimuli were presented at a distance of 5 cm (near), 37.5 cm (middle), or 70 cm (far) from each finger. The participants had to respond rapidly to a randomized sequence of unimodal (visual or tactile) and simultaneous visuotactile targets (i.e., a redundant target paradigm). Sensorimotor functions were independently assessed by the Timed Up and Go (TUG) and postural stability tests. Results showed that reaction times to the visuotactile bimodal stimuli were significantly faster than those to the unimodal stimuli, irrespective of age group [younger adults: 22.0 ± 0.6 years, older adults: 75.0 ± 3.3 years (mean ± SD)] and target distance. Of importance, a race model analysis revealed that the co-activation model (i.e., visuotactile multisensory integrative process) is supported in the far condition especially for older adults with relatively poor performance on the TUG or postural stability tests. These results suggest that aging can change visuotactile peripersonal space and that it may be closely linked to declines in sensorimotor functions related to gait and balance in older adults.

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Notes

  1. Although the laterality of the effects was beyond the scope of the present study and the number of trials on each side in each condition was very small (only ten per participant), we tried to investigate laterality with the current data for supplemental information. The results of this analysis revealed that redundant target effects occurred especially on the left side, near condition in the young/old comparison data, and near and middle conditions for the TUG and postural sway classification data. Considering all participants were right-handed, handedness might affect the RTEs somehow. Unfortunately, we did not perform the race model analysis because the number of RT data per condition was too small.

  2. Some recent studies have used a slightly different criterion for the violation of race model (e.g., Colonius and Diederich 2006; Mahoney et al. 2011, 2014a). However, the present study adopts the conventional procedure (e.g., Gondan and Minakata 2016; Miller 1982).

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant (S) (No. 16H06325), (A) (No. 25245068), and (B) (No. 26285160). Part of the data for this manuscript was presented at the International Multisensory Research Forum 2015.

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Correspondence to Wataru Teramoto.

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Teramoto, W., Honda, K., Furuta, K. et al. Visuotactile interaction even in far sagittal space in older adults with decreased gait and balance functions. Exp Brain Res 235, 2391–2405 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-017-4975-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-017-4975-7

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