(electronic music)
-: By the year 2060 one in every four people
is going to be over the age of 65.
Now the problem is that the process of aging
is inevitable and is going to effect you and I.
Fine motor skills help us with activities of daily living
and become to deteriorate over time.
Prehension, proprioception, depth perception, locomotion
and balance are all factors in motor function.
If any of these factors are compromised,
this is going to create problems
completing simple, every day tasks
such as buttoning a shirt, self feeding, self ambulating.
These are all tasks that help us stay more independent,
but as we age, this independency becomes a dependency
on healthcare providers in institutionalized living
that can cost anywhere from 40 to $80,000 annually
just in the state of Mississippi.
Now the benefit is that there is another way
to both gain and maintain a level of independence
for the older adults and that's through exercise.
So tai chi is a low intensity martial art type of exercise
that has been studied in older adults.
We've seen benefits in reducing falls,
reducing the fear of falls, balance, strength,
flexibility and cardiovascular health.
But what makes our study so unique
is that we focused primarily on fine motor skills
because of their association
with activities of daily living.
Now we looked specifically at a tai chi versus bingo
attentional control eight week interventions
where they met twice a week.
After these eight weeks, we looked specifically
at these fine motor skills and found that benefits
of manual dexterity were significantly improved
in both tai chi and bingo,
but the interesting part about that
is the fact that tai chi didn't use the same
hand manipulation tasks that bingo did.
Now on the other hand, we looked at eye-hand coordination
with a simulated feeding task and that we found
significant improvements in tai chi,
but not in bingo.
So what we can conclude so far is that tai chi
is beneficial for older adults
to improve eye-hand coordination
and manual dexterity through a simulated page-turning task.
Those things are going to then gonna benefit the activities
of daily living that help with fine motor skills,
improving an overall quality of life.
Thank you.
(pleasant music)