Aging Modulates Prefrontal Plasticity Induced by Executive Control Training

Abstract

While declines in inhibitory control, the capacity to suppress unwanted neurocognitive processes, represent a hallmark of healthy aging, whether this function is susceptible to training-induced plasticity in older populations remains largely unresolved. We addressed this question with a randomized controlled trial investigating the changes in behavior and electrical neuroimaging activity induced by a 3-week adaptive gamified Go/NoGo inhibitory control training (ICT). Performance improvements were accompanied by the development of more impulsive response strategies, but did not generalize to impulsivity traits nor quality of life. As compared with a 2-back working-memory training, the ICT in the older adults resulted in a purely quantitative reduction in the strength of the activity in a medial and ventrolateral prefrontal network over the 400 ms P3 inhibition-related event-related potentials component. However, as compared with young adults, the ICT induced distinct configurational modifications in older adults’ 200 ms N2 conflict monitoring medial–frontal functional network. Hence, while older populations show preserved capacities for training-induced plasticity in executive control, aging interacts with the underlying plastic brain mechanisms. Training improves the efficiency of the inhibition process in older adults, but its effects differ from those in young adults at the level of the coping with inhibition demands.

Decision-making and ageing: everyday life situations under risk and under ambiguity

“…This modality already being less e cient in young adults, it might be more fragile and vulnerable to aging. The decline of the performances in Go-No go tasks observed with ageing corroborate this hypothesis [29,33]. A second interpretation could also be that the task used in the present study did not contain enough items to show the age effect.…”

“…The de in up-dating in older adults, measured by n-back task, was reported previously [27][28][29], with an increased response time and a diminution in the number of hits with ageing. The present study brings similar observations, except for the 2-back response time that did not differ between the two groups.…”

The field of expertise modulates the time course of neural processes associated with inhibitory control in a sport decision-making task

“…The spatiotemporal shifts in brain mechanisms supporting IC performance have already been documented in other groups, such as in old compared to young adults 76 or in patients with Parkinson’s disease compared to controls 77 , or when the complexity of the task was increased 74 , but this study is the first to report these spatiotemporal shifts in different groups of athletes. Few studies comparing athletes and nonathletes have investigated the latency and amplitude of the N2-related and P3-related NoGo components, but the authors restricted their analyses to a prior selection of specific electrodes and did not consider the whole topographic pattern of activity 19 , 24 , 29 , 59 , 69 .…”

Experience with opioids does not modify the brain network involved in expectations of placebo analgesia

“…Since GMD is a single value index of the differences in topography between two ERP fields (Brunet et al, 2011), the GMD group mean and standard deviation cannot be computed. We thus relied on the maximal single‐electrode voltage difference across the whole montage at a given time frame, an index highly correlated with the GMD (correlation of r = .79 and r = .81 during the period of the N2 component in two independent datasets) (Najberg et al, 2020; Ribordy Lambert et al, 2020). On this basis, we identified the SESOI as 2.99 mV based on those observed in previous contrasts close to the present study in terms of the expected variation in network configuration (Colloca et al, 2009; Ribordy Lambert et al, 2020).…”