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Exercise and Aging
Published in Maria A. Fiatarone Singh, John Sutton Chair, Exercise, Nutrition, and the Older Woman, 2000
Flexibility declines markedly with aging, and is associated with disability,111–113 but no specific studies have been done to test responsiveness to standard proprioceptive neural facilitation or other techniques in this population.114 Increases in the active range of motion involving trained muscle groups have been observed following high-intensity, progressive resistance training in the frail elderly,11 depressed elders,115 and cardiac rehabilitation patients,116 but not after low-intensity resistance training115 or aerobic interventions. It is likely that bone deformity as well as muscle weakness, tendon shortening, and tissue inelasticity from disuse contribute to the problem, thus indicating more than one approach may be needed for its resolution. In general, simple calisthenics, with holding of positions for only a few seconds, appears to offer no therapeutic benefit in regard to range of motion or function, as this is typically the control group condition in many exercise studies in the elderly.
Effects of transcranial direct current stimulation over the Broca’s area on tongue twister production
Published in International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 2019
Min Ney Wong, Yanky Chan, Manwa L. Ng, Frank F. Zhu
In the domain of speech production, recent reports have highlighted the beneficial effects of anodal tDCS over Broca’s area on speech performance. Cattaneo et al. (2011) investigated the effects of anodal tDCS over Broca’s area on verbal fluency in 10 healthy individuals, and found that the participants produced more words in phonemic and semantic fluency tasks following real stimulation as compared to sham stimulation. Similar anodal tDCS effects on verbal fluency were reported by Iyer et al. (2005), in which verbal fluency was found to improve significantly in the anodal tDCS group and decreased mildly in the cathodal tDCS stimulation group. Aside from verbal fluency, Holland et al. (2011) have shown that anodal tDCS over the Broca’s area has significant facilitative effect on picture naming in healthy individuals. Concurrent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has also shown that the neural facilitation effect was regionally specific to the Broca’s area and was positively correlated with improvement in naming responses (Holland et al., 2011). Fiori, Cipollari, Caltagirone, and Marangolo (2014) examined the effects of tDCS over the left frontal region on speech repetition and reported more accurate and faster tongue twister production during anodal stimulation as compared to pre- and post-stimulation. On the other hand, cathodal tDCS significantly reduced tongue twisters repetition accuracy and increased reaction time (Fiori et al., 2014). These findings indicated that enhancement of frontal lobe activity, including Broca’s area, might have a positive effect on articulation and suggested that left frontal region may play an important role in the process of speech production.