Age Effects on Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Response Inhibition: An MEG Study

Abstract

Inhibition, the ability to suppress irrelevant information, thoughts or movements, is crucial for humans to perform context-appropriate behaviors. It was suggested that declined cognitive performance in older adults might be attributed to inhibitory deficiencies. Although previous studies have shown an age-associated reduction in inhibitory ability, the understanding regarding its cortical spatiotemporal maps remained limited. Thus, we used a whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG) to elucidate the age effects on response inhibition, and to explore the brain activation differences in high- and low-performing seniors. We recruited 22 younger and 22 older adults to participate in the visual Go/No-go task. Both behavioral performance and neuromagnetic responses to No-go stimuli were analyzed. The behavioral results showed that the older adults made more false alarm (FA) errors than the younger adults did. The MEG results showed that the seniors exhibited declined cortical activities in middle temporal gyrus (MTG) and delayed activation in MTG, prefrontal cortex (PFC) and pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA). Furthermore, among the older adults, more recruitment of the left PFC was found in the high-performers than in the lower-performers. In conclusion, age-related deficiencies in response inhibition were observed in both behavioral performance and neurophysiological measurement. Our results also suggested that frontal recruitment plays a compensatory role in successful inhibition.

Effect of Age in Auditory Go/No-Go Tasks: A Magnetoencephalographic Study

“…In contrast to our previous findings, we did not find any significant differences between high- and low-performing older adults. Our previous results from a visual go/no-go task indicated that high performers exhibited greater left frontal activation than low performers in an older adult group [ 22 ]. The experimental methodology of the two studies is similar apart from the type of stimulus used (visual versus auditory).…”

“…We recruited 20 younger adults (10 of whom were females; mean age 24.4 years) and 20 healthy community-dwelling older adults (12 of whom were females; mean age 62.6 years) as participants in this study. The majority of participants were sampled from our previous investigation [ 22 ]. Based on a self-report, all participants were right-handed; had no history of neurological or psychological disorders; had normal hearing, and had normal or corrected-to-normal (with contact lenses) vision.…”

“…The age-associated changes in cortical activation underlying go/no-go tasks have primarily been explored using the visual modality. There is accumulating evidence indicating that older adults perform more poorly than younger adults [ 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 ]. In our previous visual go/no-go study, the older adult group exhibited reduced cortical activation in the middle temporal gyrus (MTG) and delayed latencies in the MTG, prefrontal cortex (PFC), and pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA) [ 22 ].…”

“…To date, only one MEG study has used auditory go/no-go tasks to examine error processing in incorrect no-go trials, and no studies have yet examined cortical activation during inhibitory processes [ 37 ]. Our previous study, based on the visual go/no-go paradigm, found that among older participants, high performers exhibited greater left PFC activation than low performers [ 22 ]. Several studies have found greater variation in cognitive performance among older individuals [ 38 , 39 , 40 ].…”

Alpha connectivity and inhibitory control in adults with autism spectrum disorder

“…This network consists of several right-lateralized frontoparietal regions [15][16][17], including the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), insula, supplementary motor area (SMA), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and inferior and superior parietal lobules (IPL and SPL), of which the right IFG plays a prominent role [18][19][20][21]. Research using magnetoencephalography (MEG), which is sensitive to the timing of neural activity [22], has illustrated that these regions appear to be maximally active between 200 and 400 ms, after stimulus onset [23][24][25]. Electroencephalographic (EEG) studies have also revealed that peaks in event-related potentials at around 200 and 300 ms are associated with conflict monitoring and motor inhibition, respectively [26][27][28][29].…”