JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is a precursor stage to dementia. Various studies are being conducted to develop tools that can more easily and quickly measure cognitive function, including MCI, compared to traditional tools like the MMSE or CIST. Behavior-based studies, unlike traditional assessments, offer advantages such as shorter testing durations and continuous data tracking. Research has explored cognitive testing through gait and hand movements, with this study focusing on hand movements due to their less restrictive space requirements and ease of data collection.

Objective:

This study investigates whether hand rotation movements can measure control abilities related to aging and cognitive decline. We hypothesize that there will be differences in hand motion control ability between young adults (aged 20-29) and older adults (aged 65-80). We defined seven hand motion measurement indicators to test this hypothesis, aiming to derive meaningful measurement indicators for elderly individuals experiencing normal aging before conducting experiments on patients with MCI or dementia.

Methods:

We selected 39 elderly individuals (aged 65-80) and 31 young adults (aged 20-29) who had not been diagnosed with MCI or dementia and who were capable of normal arm, hand, and finger movements. The Purdue Pegboard Test was conducted before the main experiment, and two individuals who fell outside the normal range were excluded, leaving a final sample of 68 participants. In the main experiment, participants sat facing a webcam and performed hand rotation movements three times in real-time, with the video data recorded. For statistical verification, we set the significance level at 0.05 and analyzed the data using SPSS 22.0 for Windows. The GEE model was applied to analyze the correlation between the number of attempts in the elderly and young adult groups.

Results:

Among the 7 dependent variables, 4 showed statistically significant differences. The dependent variables of total rotation count, total rotation angle, total rotation time, and the number of rotation angle changes showed statistically significant differences. This result suggests that hand rotation frequency differs between the young and elderly groups.

Conclusions:

This study contributes to understanding the decline in motor control abilities due to aging by specifically analyzing the impact of aging on hand rotation performance. By confirming the tendency for the variation in rotation angle to decrease in the elderly, it clarifies the impact of aging on fine motor control abilities of the hand.