“Walking” through the sensory, cognitive, and temporal degradations of healthy aging

Abstract

As we age, there is a wide range of changes in motor, sensory, cognitive, and temporal processing due to alterations in the functioning of the central nervous and musculoskeletal systems. Specifically, aging is associated with degradations in gait; altered processing of the individual sensory systems; modifications in executive control, memory, and attention; and changes in temporal processing. These age-related alterations are often inter-related and have been suggested to result from shared neural substrates. Additionally, the overlap between these brain areas and those controlling walking raises the possibility of facilitating performance in several tasks by introducing protocols that can efficiently target all four domains. Attempts to counteract these negative effects of normal aging have been focusing on research to prevent falls and/or enhance cognitive processes, while ignoring the potential multisensory benefits accompanying old age. Research shows that the aging brain tends to increasingly rely on multisensory integration to compensate for degradations in individual sensory systems and for altered neural functioning. This review covers the age-related changes in the above-mentioned domains and the potential to exploit the benefits associated with multisensory integration in aging so as to improve one's mobility and enhance sensory, cognitive, and temporal processing.

Relative Protein Intake and Physical Function in Older Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies

“…On the other hand, walking ability needs a larger integration among the body systems in comparison with sit and stand up or tightening an object. Indeed, walking is a complex activity involving a variety of neural process (e.g., sensory, cortical cognitive, temporal) [ 40 , 41 ], cerebral and peripheral vascular beds [ 42 , 43 ], as well as lung [ 44 ], cardiac and muscular functions [ 45 ], to list a few. Consequently, walking ability represents the functioning of multiple organ systems instead of just one system [ 46 ], and marked disturbances in gait pattern may occur in response to cardiovascular, neurological and neuromuscular pathologies [ 40 , 41 ].…”

Step width variability as a discriminator of age-related gait changes

“…As such, step width variability increases when active control is subjected to noisy inputs [5]. Agerelated decrease in sensorimotor precision [55][56][57] can be treated as a reduced signal-to-noise ratio [5,58,59]. It is likely that an imprecise active control in older adults causes increments in step width variability [5,60] and increases the risk of falling [52].…”

Error monitoring in decision‐making and timing is disrupted in autism spectrum disorder

“…To assess the potentially different temporal information processing of individuals with ASD, we also utilized an independent timing task (self-paced finger tapping) that required participants to keep a stable rhythm at a pace comfortable to them. This task was chosen as it has been shown to capture the expected agerelated differences in temporal information processing, presumably because of being less open to the influence of compensatory mechanisms given its simplicity [Turgeon et al, 2012;Vanneste et al, 2001; for a review see Paraskevoudi, Balcı & Vatakis, 2018].…”