Aging & Gerontology

Abstract

Proprioception allows the central nervous system to detect the position, movement, and force of the limbs and joints without visual input and plays a critical role in motor control. However, the extent and nature of its decline with aging remains unclear. Across several experiments, we investigated whether age-related changes in proprioception are uniform across proprioceptive senses and testing conditions. In an initial study, we compared the effects of aging on the senses of position and force, which rely on distinct neural pathways. Older adults retained a sense of position comparable to younger adults but showed an altered sense of force, specifically at low target forces. This selective decline suggests an age-related impairment in the central processing of proprioceptive information. To further explore this hypothesis, we evaluated the sense of force under conditions designed to either facilitate or challenge proprioceptive processing. In older adults, the sense of force improved when sensory processing was supported (e.g., with auditory feedback) and worsened when perturbed (e.g., with tendon vibration). Together, these findings suggest that early declines in proprioception with age are likely driven by deficits in sensorimotor integration, particularly affecting the sense of force. This work underscores the importance of assessment modality and supports the need for comprehensive evaluation approaches that account for multiple proprioceptive senses and testing conditions to fully characterize proprioceptive function in older adults.

Biography

Dr. Mélanie Henry is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Integrative Physiology at the University of Colorado Boulder. She earned her PhD in Human Movement Science from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium) in 2022, where she investigated age-related changes in proprioception and their impact on motor control. Her current research focuses on neurophysiology of aging and multiple sclerosis.