Journal article

Cognitive-motor interference during postural control indicates at-risk cerebellar profiles in females with the FMR1 premutation

CM Kraan, DR Hocking, N Georgiou-Karistianis, SA Metcalfe, AD Archibald, J Fielding, J Trollor, JL Bradshaw, J Cohen, KM Cornish

Behavioural Brain Research | Published : 2013

Abstract

Recent investigations report a higher risk of motor symptoms in females with the FMR1 premutation (PM-carriers) than has hitherto been appreciated. Here we examined basic sensorimotor and postural control under different sensory and attentional dual-task demands. Physiological performance and postural sway measures from the Physiological Profile Assessment (Lord et al., 2003 [39]) were conducted in 28 female PM-carriers (mean age: 41.32. ±. 8.03) and 31 female controls with normal FMR1 alleles (mean age: 41.61. ±. 8.3). Multiple regression analyses were conducted to examine the moderating role of CGG-repeat length on the relation between age and postural sway under dual-task interference. In..

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Grants

Awarded by Murdoch Children's Research Institute


Funding Acknowledgements

This work was supported by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery grant (DP110103346) to KC, NGK, SM, JT, JF and JB, and a Monash University Research Fellowship to DH. This work was partly supported by a National Fragile X Foundation Rosen Summer Student Fellowship award and the Australian Postgraduate Award Scholarship Scheme to CK. SM was supported by the University of Melbourne. SM and AA were supported by the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute and the Victorian Government's Operational Infrastructure Support Programme. We express our thanks to the Fragile X Association of Australia and Fragile X Alliance. for their support in recruitment. We also thank Jonathan Whitty from Healthscope Pathology and Erin Turbitt from the Murdoch Children's Research Institute for their assistance on the molecular procedures and Anna Atkinson for helping with the data collection. In addition, we thank Stephen Lord from Neuroscience Research Australia for advice on the PPA. Finally, we are indebted to all the families who participated in this research.