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Neural control of the lips differs for young and older adults following a perturbation

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Abstract

Aging impairs the control of many skilled movements including speech. The purpose of this paper was to investigate whether young and older adults adapt to lower lip perturbations during speech differently. Twenty men (10 young, 26 ± 3 years of age; 10 older, 60 ± 9 years of age) were requested to repeat the word (“papa”) 300 times. In 15% of the trials, the subjects experienced a mechanical perturbation on the lower lip. Displacement and neural activation (EMG) of the upper and lower lips were evaluated. Perturbations to the lower lip caused a greater increase in the maximum displacement of the lower lip for older adults compared with young adults (34.7 ± 19% vs. 13.4 ± 17%; P = 0.017). Furthermore, young adults exhibited significantly greater 30–100 Hz normalized EMG power for the lower lip compared to the upper lip (P < 0.005). In young adults, changes from normal to perturbed trials in the 30–50 Hz frequency band of the EMG were negatively correlated to the changes from normal to perturbed trials in the lower lip maximum displacement (R 2 = 0.48; P = 0.025). It is concluded that young adults adapt better to lower lip perturbations compared with older adults and that the associated neural activation strategy of the involved muscle is different for the two age groups.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a NIH NIDCD grant DC005698 and a University of Iowa Biological Sciences Funding Program Grant to K. J. Ballard and R01 AG031769 to Evangelos A. Christou. We thank Arik Wald for computer programming; Jerald Moon for technical expertise; John W. Folkins for intellectual discussion; Michael Molley, Jeffrey Tyler, Valerie Flemmer, Vanessa Shaw, Rebekah Abel, Stacey Meyers, Kira Spencer, and Abbie Hammes for assistance with data acquisition.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Physiology and Kinesiology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 32611-8205, USA

    Ana Carolina de Miranda Marzullo, Osmar Pinto Neto & Evangelos A. Christou

  2. Universidade Camilo Castelo Branco, São Paulo, Brazil

    Ana Carolina de Miranda Marzullo & Osmar Pinto Neto

  3. Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Kirrie J. Ballard & Lauren Chaitow

  4. Research Imaging Center, Departments of Neurology and Radiology, The University of Texas Health Sciences Center, San Antonio, TX, USA

    Donald A. Robin

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  1. Ana Carolina de Miranda Marzullo
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  2. Osmar Pinto Neto
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  3. Kirrie J. Ballard
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  4. Donald A. Robin
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  5. Lauren Chaitow
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  6. Evangelos A. Christou
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Correspondence to Evangelos A. Christou.

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de Miranda Marzullo, A.C., Neto, O.P., Ballard, K.J. et al. Neural control of the lips differs for young and older adults following a perturbation. Exp Brain Res 206, 319–327 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-010-2411-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-010-2411-3

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