Cortical thickness in right frontal and left lingual gyri differentially mediate episodic memory for spatial contextual details across the adult lifespan

Abstract

Healthy aging is associated with declines in episodic memory and with widespread cortical thinning.These parallel declines suggest that age-related changes in cortical thickness may contribute to episodic memory decline with age. The current study uses a cross-sectional study design to examine whether regional cortical thickness mediates the relationship between age and episodic memory, as measured by a context memory task for faces. Mediation and conditional mediation models were tested using bootstrapping in order to determine how age-associated changes in regional cortical thickness mediated age-associated changes in performance on the context memory task. We observed that right superior frontal cortical thickness conditionally mediated spatial context memory only in middle-aged and older adults; and right caudal middle frontal cortical thickness conditionally mediated context memory only in older adults. Left lingual cortical thickness mediated spatial context memory across the adult lifespan, but this effect was most evident at midlife. Right parahippocampal cortical thickness mediated context memory, independent of age. We conclude that our cortical thickness results were generally consistent with the posterior-to-anterior shift in aging hypothesis (Davis et al., 2008) for episodic memory. 1994).Several studies have reported age-related volumetric decline in brain regions related to encoding and/or retrieval of contextual details from episodic memory Hogstrom, Westlye, Walhovd, & Fjell, 2013;Raz, Ghisletta, Rodrigue, Kennedy, & Lindenberger, 2010;Walhovd et al., 2011). Salat et al (2004) reported reductions in cortical thickness with age in PFC, supramarginal gyrus, and calcarine sulcus, with relative preservation of lateral temporal cortex thickness. Raz et al Changes in context memory and cortical thickness across the adult lifespan 4 (2005) also reported a steady decline in PFC grey matter volumes with age, starting in young adulthood. However, five year longitudinal follow-up data indicated there was notable individual variability in how PFC volumes changed with age, with some subjects exhibiting volumetric decline, and other subjects exhibiting either no change or increased PFC volume at five year follow-up (Raz et al., 2005). In contrast to a general decrease in PFC volumes throughout adulthood, hippocampal volume decline with age exhibits a non-linear pattern. For example, Walhovd et al (2011) have reported changes in hippocampal volumes with age resembling an inverted-U shape, which was suggestive of accelerated volume loss in this region in late midlife onwards. This observation was corroborated by Fjell et al (2013). Therefore, there is significant evidence that aging is related to structural decline in several brain regions associated with episodic memory.However, fewer studies have examined whether age-related declines in brain volume and/or cortical thickness directly relates to age-related decline in episodic memory tasks. In other words, do age-related differences in regional cortical thickne...

Associations between digital media use and brain surface structural measures in preschool-aged children

“…Adjacent to the parahippocampus, the lingual gyrus is involved with complex visual memory encoding, including facial and emotional expressions, core social-cognitive processes 56 . Lower CT in the lingual gyrus has been linked to lower episodic memory and social cognition in adults 57 . The lingual gyrus has also been found to support printed letter recognition, a pre-reading skill that www.nature.com/scientificreports/ typically develops in the preschool-age range, with greater left-lateralization linked to higher skill 58,59 .…”

P300, Gray Matter Volume and Individual Characteristics Correlates in Healthy Elderly

“…The middle temporal gyrus has been associated with the recognition of faces and access to word meaning (Acheson and Hagoort, 2013), although its exact function is still largely unknown, and shown to be affected by age-related volume loss (Raz et al, 2004). Also, the left lingual gyrus, linked to processing vision and encoding visual memories, has been found to be modulated by age (Swierkot and Rajah, 2018). Similarly, the supramarginal gyrus (Sussman et al, 2016), related with phonological word choices and language perception and processing, and the caudate nucleus (Jiji et al, 2013), related to several executive functions such as memory, learning, inhibitory control, etc., have both been reported to decrease with age.…”