Relationship Between Hand Grip Strength, Cognition, And Hand Dexterity In Older Adults: A Pilot Study

Background and Objective: In older adults most important two factor is cognition and hand motorfunctions, most noticeable in requiring much skill in fine motor activities. The normal process of aginginvolves declines in cognitive and sensorimotor functions that affect performance of activities of dailyliving. Dexterity measures help to detects early decline of hand function and it is necessary to quantifymanual dexterity of older adults not only design for work but also for the product and system daily activitiesby older adults. Force control is necessary for grip because most daily object required acquired force formovement not maximum force. While using large grip forces can lead to changes in the aging neuromotorsystem other than impaired tactile afferent functioning. Some older adults may produce less stable isometricforces with hand and arm muscles because of peripheral reorganization of their muscles. There is greaterconnection between hand grip strength and cognition, the deterioration of cognitive function is a high risk ofAD. Therefore, handgrip strength considers as an early marker of cognitive decline and incident dementia.Objective is to find relationship between hand grip strength, cognition, and hand dexterity in older adults.Methodology: 16 subjects were recruited on the basis of selection criteria. Subjects evaluated cognition,grip strength, and hand dexterity using outcome measures are MoCA, hand held dynamometer, and 9-holepeg test respectively.Results: Karl Pearson correlation were used for the statistical analysis. The result showed that moderatecorrelation between cognition and grip strength for right and left side with p value 0.031 and r value 0.540,and p = 0.40 and r = 0.517 respectively and weak correlation between cognition and hand dexterity for bothright and left with p value 0.162 and r = -.367 and p = .180, r= -.353 respectively.Conclusion: the study shows moderate association between cognition and grip strength and weak correlationbetween cognition and hand dexterity for both right and left side.