Age-Related Differences in Cortical and Subcortical Activities during Observation and Motor Imagery of Dynamic Postural Tasks: An fMRI Study

Figure 6

Age-related differences in the interactions between brain activity during motor imagery (MI) and action observation (AO), revealed by an ROI analysis. (a) shows higher brain activity in the cerebellum () and putamen () in young adults compared to older adults, when a condition with no visual support (MI) is contrasted with one with visual support (AO) for the dynamic task. Inversely, (b) presented greater cerebral activity in the cerebellum () and putamen () in elderly adults compared to young adults, when a condition with visual support (AO) is contrasted with one with no visual support (MI). (c) and (d) represent the activation of the cerebellum and the putamen depending on the group and the mental simulation condition. The plots for the cerebellum and the putamen are based on voxels (−2, −60, and −34 and 30, −18, and 2, resp.). Colored circles highlight significantly stronger brain activity in young adults. Activations are displayed with at the voxel level, extended by a FWE corrected at the cluster level. Colored bars indicate the significance level of the contrasts. Spatial coordinates (x, y, and z) are provided in MNI space.