To investigate finger movement parameters using a touch-pad monitoring system in healthy elderly subjects.

Vision-stimulated bilateral index finger movement parameters in regard to response time, movement time, minimum time of response and movement were recorded with a touch-pad monitoring system in 90 right-handed healthy elderly subjects from July 2015 to October 2015 in Shanxi People’s Hospital. The correlations between age and these records, and differences between left and right, sex were analyzed by paired or unpaired t test, Pearson correlation analysis and the unitary linear regression equation, accordingly.

Either average response time, movement time, minimal response time or movement time was significantly positively correlated with age (r=0.624, 0.624, 0.557, 0.586, 0.616, 0.616, 0.545, 0.591; P < 0.01), and were linearly correlated with age (b=5.468, 5.894, 3.530, 3.713, 4.041, 4.569, 2.328, 2.521; P < 0.01). There was a significant difference between left and right in finger movement parameters, showing that right hand was faster than the left one (t=-4.161, -4.596, -5.158, -4.190; P < 0.05). Gender did not affect the finger movement parameters (t=0.832, 0.563, 1.431, 0.889, 1.220, 0.509, 0.751, 0.389; P > 0.05).

Finger movement monitoring system based on touch-pad can make a quantitative description of finger movement patterns and provide convenience for clinical quantitative evaluation of finger movement state. Left and right hand movement parameters in right-handed healthy elderly people were significantly different, and the movement parameters significantly correlated with age.