Cortical signatures of precision grip force control in children, adolescents and adults

Abstract
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Abstract

Human dexterous motor control improves from childhood to adulthood, but little is known about the changes in cortico-cortical communication that support such ontogenetic refinement of motor skills. To investigate age-related differences in connectivity between cortical regions involved in dexterous control we analyzed electroencephalographic data from 88 individuals (range 8-30y) performing a visually-guided precision grip task using Dynamic Causal Modelling (DCM) and Parametric Empirical Bayes (PEB). Our results demonstrate that bidirectional coupling in a canonical 'grasping network' is associated with precision grip performance across age groups. We further demonstrate greater backward coupling from higher-order to lower-order sensorimotor regions from late adolescence in addition to differential associations between connectivity strength in a premotor-prefrontal network and motor performance for different age groups. We interpret these findings as reflecting greater use of top-down and executive control processes with development. These results expand our understanding of the cortical mechanisms that support dexterous abilities through development.

Data availability

Preprocessed data analyzed in this study have been deposited to Open Science Framework, under the DOI 10.17605/OSF.IO/AP7WS. Source data files have been made available for figure 1D, 4, 5 and 6.

The following data sets were generated

1. Mikkel Malling Beck
(2021) Age-related differences in motor control
Open Science Framework, doi:10.17605/OSF.IO/AP7WS.

https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/AP7WS

Article and author information

Author details

Mikkel Malling Beck

Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen N, Denmark

For correspondence
mib@nexs.ku.dk

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-8006-2580
Meaghan Elizabeth Spedden

Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen N, Denmark

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Martin J Dietz

Center for Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Institute of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-0029-6932
Anke Ninija Karabanov

Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, Københavns Universitet, Copenhagen N, Denmark

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-1874-393X
Mark Schram Christensen

Department of Neuroscience, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen N, Denmark

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Jesper Lundbye-Jensen

Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen N, Denmark

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

Funding

Danish Ministry of Culture (FPK.2018-0070)

Mikkel Malling Beck
Jesper Lundbye-Jensen

Nordea-fonden (02-2016-0213)

Jesper Lundbye-Jensen

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Ethics

Human subjects: Before enrolling in the study, all participants assented to the study procedures and written informed consent was obtained from participants (> 18 years) and their parents (< 18 years). The study was approved by the regional ethical committee (protocol number: H-17019671).

Copyright

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.