• Yu-Cheng Pei, Shih-Wei Chou, Pay-Shih Lin, Yin-Chou Lin, Tony H C Hsu, and Alice M K Wong.
• Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taoyuan, Taiwan.
• J Formos Med Assoc. 2008 Feb 1; 107 (2): 103-10.

Background/PurposeThe objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of motor control from Tai Chi Chuan (TCC) on eye-hand coordination in the elderly.MethodsForty-two elderly people were recruited into this study. People in the TCC group (n = 22) had been practicing TCC regularly for more than 3 years. The control group (n = 20) comprised healthy and active elderly people. Subjects were asked to stroke target sensors in a test device with computer recording. There were three different target sensor sizes (1 cm, 1.5 cm and 2 cm in diameter) for different tests. For each target stroking, the following were recorded and calculated: start and end positions, duration of movement, pause time, peak velocity, and the time to reach peak velocity.ResultsThe TCC group showed significantly better results in decrease of displacement (p = 0.003), movement time (p = 0.002), pause time (p < 0.001), number of submovements (p = 0.001), and better skewness coefficients (p < 0.001) than the control group. However, the difference in the peak velocity of the TCC and control groups did not reach statistical significance (p = 0.026).ConclusionThe elderly TCC group had better results on the eye-hand coordination test than the control elderly group.

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