Age dependence of primary motor cortex plasticity induced by paired associative stimulation

Objective The increase of elderly population prompted growing research for the understanding of cerebral phenomena sustaining learning abilities, with inclusion of long-term potentiation (LTP)-like plasticity phenomena. Aim of the present study was to characterize LTP-like plasticity dependence on age and gender. Methods A LTP-like primary motor cortex plasticity inducing a potentiation of the motor evoked potential (MEP) to focal transcranial magnetic stimulation as a consequence of a paired associative stimulation (PAS) was induced in a 50 healthy subject cohort, equally distributed for gender and age groups (25 young subjects, mean age ± SD = 29.8 ± 4.5 years; elderly 61.1 ± 4.1 years). Results Resting motor thresholds’ excitability level increased in the elderly group, the basal MEP did not depend on gender or age. The PAS-induced primary motor cortex (M1) plastic excitability modulation was similar in young females and males, while it decreased with age in females only. Conclusions A reduction of the PAS-induced M1 plasticity in females after menopause was documented, possibly due to an impairment of intracortical excitatory network activity. Significance A LTP-like plasticity dependence on age was found in female only, suggesting caution in interpreting behavioural studies on learning abilities in dependence on age.