Abstract
Ältere Menschen müssen unter Umständen neu lernen, wie sie mit technischen Geräten umgehen können oder sie müssen nach einer Verletzung wieder lernen, sich um sich selbst zu kümmern (z. B. Anziehen von Kleidung). Eine Reihe von Studien und auch unsere eigene Arbeit zeigen eine nachlassende Fähigkeit von älteren Personen, neue manuelle motorische Fertigkeiten zu lernen. Wir konnten nachweisen, dass das räumliche Arbeitsgedächtnis („spatial working memory“, SWM) in beiden Formen des motorischen Lernens eine bedeutende Rolle spielt, nämlich der sensomotorischen Adaptation und im Lernen von motorischen Sequenzen. Unsere Arbeiten zeigten, dass die Leistung des SWM prädiktiv für das Ausmaß in Bezug auf das motorische Lernen bei jungen Menschen ist. Des Weiteren beobachteten wir signifikante neuronale Überlappungen während der Ausführung einer SWM-Aufgabe in frühen, aber nicht späten Phasen der Adaptation. Im Gegensatz dazu zeigte sich, dass ältere Menschen nicht die gleichen Gehirnareale aktivierten wie jüngere Menschen, wenn eine neue Aufgabe gelernt werden sollte. Es konnten keine Korrelationen zwischen den Leistungen des SWM und dem Ausmaß der sensomotorischen Adaptation noch zwischen den Leistungen des SWM und dem Ausmaß im Erlernen motorischer Sequenzen bei älteren Personen gefunden werden. Daraus kann geschlossen werden, dass ältere Personen das SWM in frühen Phasen des motorischen Lernens nicht erfolgreich einsetzen und dass sie bei der Kontrolle einfacher Aufgaben stärker auf kognitive Prozesse angewiesen sind. Im Gegensatz dazu greifen sie bei komplexeren Aufgaben jedoch weniger auf diese kognitiven Prozesse zurück. Ein Verständnis darüber, wie das motorische Lernen erhalten bleiben kann bzw. welche Limitationen es gibt ist u. a. dann wichtig, wenn geeignete Rehabilitationsmaßnahmen generiert werden sollen.
Following an injury, for example older adults may need to learn to control and interact with assistive devices or may need to relearn self-care, such as dressing. Many studies, including our own work, have documented a declining ability of older adults to learn new manual motor skills. We have demonstrated the importance of spatial working memory (SWM) in the two major types of motor skill learning: sensorimotor adaptation and motor sequence learning. We found that SWM performance is predictive of the rate of motor learning in young adults for both sensorimotor adaptation and motor sequence learning. We also observed significant neural overlap between a SWM task and the early, but not late, stages of adaptation. In contrast, older adults do not engage the same brain regions as young adults do when learning new motor skills. No correlation between SWM performance and rate of sensorimotor adaptation or SWM performance and rate of motor sequence learning was found in older adults. Therefore, older adults do not successfully recruit SWM during the early stages of skill learning and rely more on cognitive processes for the control of simple actions. In contrast, for complex tasks they are less likely to engage the relevant cognitive processes. Understanding the preservation and limits of skill learning ability of older adults is, among others, critical for the develpopment of rehabilitation programs.
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