Movement control of the cervical spine declines with aging : a cross-sectional study

Luznik, Izabela (author), Pajek, Maja (author), Majcen Rošker, Živa (author)

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.

• Language: English
• Keywords: sport, movement control, aging, cervical spine, propioception
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FŠ - Faculty of Sport
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2025
• Number of pages: Str. 1612–1619
• Numbering: Vol. 41, no. 8
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-176669
• UDC: 796.01
• ISSN on article: 1532-5040
• DOI: 10.1080/09593985.2025.2454519
• COBISS.SI-ID: 224764419
• Publication date in RUL: 08.12.2025

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: Physiotherapy theory and practice
• Shortened title: Physiother. theory pract.
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• ISSN: 1532-5040
• COBISS.SI-ID: 521337369

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: šport, nadzor gibanja, staranje, vratna hrbtenica, propiocepcija

Projects

• Funder: ARIS - Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency
• Project number: P5-0147
• Name: Kineziologija monostrukturnih, polistrukturnih in konvencionalnih športov