Visuomotor behaviors in computer-based reaching tasks by young and older adults: implication for geriatric rehabilitation

Older adults are more likely to be required to face the problems of deteriorating movement control due to ageing and poor visuomotor adaptation is believed to be one of the important contributors to the problems. Therefore, we assessed motor performance together with gaze behaviors in young and older adults when they were performing computer-based reaching tasks aiming to examine the potential impact of ageing on visuomotor behaviors and adaptation. In this study, visuomotor behaviors in computer-based reaching tasks were quantitatively evaluated under providing online visual feedback or blocking online visual feedback (simulated visual deficiency) conditions. Results revealed that ageing affects motor performance of the reaching tasks significantly in both visual feedback conditions. Older adults performed distinctive gaze behaviors when compared with the young adults. It implies that simulated visual deficiency in the blocking online visual feedback condition may work as a stimulus to cause extra perceptive load during movement execution and, more importantly, ageing induces slower visuomotor adaptation. Therefore, visual deterioration may slow down the process of visuomotor adaptation. Consequently, the results of present study provide us with new insights in how to further improve the Geriatric rehabilitative training methods for older adults in the context of augmenting visuomotor behaviors, for example, by utilizing a welldesigned errorless training methodology to enhance movement automaticity and visuomotor adaption during motor rehabilitation in Geriatric population. Correspondence to: Mengjiao Fan, School of Public Health, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, 3/F, The Hong Kong Jockey Club Building for Interdisciplinary Research, 5 Sassoon Road, Pokfulam, Hong Kong SAR, Tel: 852 2817 5274; Fax: 852 2855 1712; E-mail: [email protected]