Movement control of the cervical spine declines with aging

Background: Previous studies suggest that cervical spine position sense declines with age, while the relationship between aging and cervical spine movement control remains unknown. Objective: To investigate the relationship between age and cervical spine movement control in asymptomatic adults. Methods: One hundred five asymptomatic adults (21–79 years old) were included. The Butterfly test (performed with an inertial measurement unit) was used to assess movement control of the cervical spine, in which participants tracked an unpredictable moving target with active head and neck movements at three different movement path difficulty levels (3 repetitions each). The determined parameters were amplitude accuracy (AA), time on target (ToT), undershoot (U) and overshoot (O). Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient and simple linear regression analysis were used to assess the relationship between age and each parameter. Results: A significant relationship was demonstrated between advancing age and the AA, ToT and U parameters for all three movement path difficulty levels (p ≤ .001), but not for the O parameter (p > .05). Advancing age explained 19.8–30.4%, 24.5–30.8% and 33.7–37.2% of the variance in the AA, ToT, and U parameters, respectively. Conclusion: The results suggest that cervical spine movement control declines with aging in an asymptomatic population. Clinicians may need to monitor potential deficits in cervicocephalic kinesthesia in older asymptomatic adults, as these impairments may have a considerable impact on their functional abilities.