Challenging the relationship of grip strength with cognitive status in older adults

Abstract

Objective Grip strength is a widely used motor assessment in ageing research and has repeatedly been shown to be associated with cognition. It has been proposed that grip strength could enhance cognitive screening in experimental or clinical research, but this study uses multiple data‐driven approaches to caution against this interpretation. Furthermore, we introduce an alternative motor assessment, comparable to grip dynamometry, but has a more robust relationship with cognition among older adults. Design Associations between grip strength and cognition (measured with the Montreal Cognitive Assessment) were analysed cross sectionally using multivariate regression in two datasets: (1) The Irish LongituDinal Study on Ageing (TILDA; N = 5,980, community‐dwelling adults ages 49–80) and (2) an experimental dataset (N = 250, community‐dwelling adults aged 39–98). Additional statistical simulations on TILDA tested how ceiling effects or skewness in these variables influenced these associations for quality control. Results Grip strength was significantly but weakly associated with cognition, consistent with previous studies. Simulations revealed this was not due to skewness/ceiling effects. Conversely, a new alternative motor assessment (functional reaching [FR]) had a stronger, more robust and more sensitive relationship with cognition compared to grip strength. Conclusions Grip strength should be cautiously interpreted as being associated with cognition. However, FR may have a stronger and clinically useful relationship with cognition.

Relationship between motor abilities and executive functions in patients after pediatric stroke

“…Fine motor functions and upper limb performance that involve functional movements (i.e. grasping, object manipulation, or reaching) are suggested to hold more cognitive demand than gross motor functions and hence might present a stronger link to cognitive performance (Hooyman et al, 2021;Wassenberg et al, 2005;Ziereis & Jansen, 2016). Together, our data follow the idea that only specific motor abilities entailing a certain extent of cognitive demand are significantly interrelated with EFs in patients after pediatric stroke.…”

“…Both of these brain structures reach maturity late and both show development up to the prepubertal age (Anderson et al, 2001;Stargatt et al, 2002;Tiemeier et al, 2010). In contrast, maximal force production such as hand strength, primarily relies on sensorimotor cortical regions (Hooyman et al, 2021) and therefore likely relates to cognitive functions differently.…”

Resting EEG spectral slopes are associated with age-related differences in information processing speed

“…The next motor task administered was the simulated feeding task (Schaefer & Hengge, 2016; Schaefer, Hooyman, & Duff, 2020). This task has been validated in older adults and reflects participants’ ability to perform visually guided control of the arm and hand (Schaefer & Hengge, 2016), but has also been associated with cognitive function (Hooyman, Malek-Ahmadi, Fauth, & Schaefer, 2020; Schaefer, Hooyman, & Duff, 2020).…”

Improving prediction of amyloid deposition in Mild Cognitive Impairment with a timed motor task

“…The copyright holder for this preprint this version posted June 24, 2021. ; https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.06.16.21259056 doi: medRxiv preprint 11 clinical trials. We also acknowledge that the relative strength of the timed motor task as a predictor of amyloid was not directly compared to other existing motor tasks (e.g., grip dynamometry, 10 Meter Walk Test), but we have previously shown that the motor task presented here is likely more sensitive to disease severity than other motor assessments 9 (see also 30 ). As such, motor assessments have promise as cost-effective and non-invasive screening tools that would allow for enriching samples in clinical trials in AD.…”

“…A full visual description of the timed motor task can be viewed on Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/phs57/wiki/Functional_reaching_task/), and its methods have been published previously [7][8][9][10] . To summarize, participants use a standard plastic spoon to acquire two raw kidney beans at a time from a central cup (all cups 9.5cm diameter and 5.8cm deep) to one of three distal cups arranged at a radius of 16 cm at -40°, 0°, and 40° relative to the central cup.…”