Behavioural correlates of age-related differences in movement representation

In the past few years, several functional MRI (fMRI) studies have revealed pronounced aging effects on cortical activation patterns during a variety of cognitive or perceptual tasks. It has been suggested that increased task-related activation in old subjects may signal beneficial compensatory activity to counteract structural and neurochemical changes associated with the normal aging process. Under the assumption that incremental movement rates are associated with an increased functional demand on the motor system we used fMRI to investigate the behavioural significance of additionally recruited brain regions i…