Does somatosensory acuity influence the extent of internal model recalibration in young and older adults?

Abstract

AbstractThe ability to adjust movements to changes in the environment declines with aging. This age-related decline is caused by the decline of explicit adjustments. However, automatic adjustment of movement, or internal model recalibration, remains intact and might even be increased with aging. Since somatosensory information appears to be required for internal model recalibration, it might well be that an age-related decline in somatosensory acuity is linked to the increase of internal model recalibration. One possible explanation for an increased internal model recalibration is that age-related somatosensory deficits could lead to altered sensory integration with an increased weighting of the visual sensory-prediction error. Another possibility is that reduced somatosensory acuity results in an increased reliance on predicted sensory feedback. Both these explanations led to our preregistered hypothesis: we expect a relation between the decline of somatosensation and the increased internal model recalibration with aging. However, we failed to support this hypothesis. Our results question the existence of reliability-based integration of visual and somatosensory signals during motor adaptation.New & NoteworthyIs somatosensory acuity linked to implicit motor adaptation? The latter is larger in old compared to younger people? In light of reliability-based sensory integration, we hypothesized that this larger implicit adaptation was linked to an age-related lower reliability of somatosensation. Over two experiments and 130 participants, we failed to find any evidence for this. We discuss alternative explanations for the increase in implicit adaptation with age and the validity of our somatosensory assessment.