Differences in dual-task performance and prefrontal cortex activation between younger and older adults

Abstract

BackgroundThe purpose of this study was to examine task-related changes in prefrontal cortex (PFC) activity during a dual-task in both healthy young and older adults and compare patterns of activation between the age groups. We also sought to determine whether brain activation during a dual-task relates to executive/attentional function and how measured factors associated with both of these functions vary between older and younger adults.ResultsThirty-five healthy volunteers (20 young and 15 elderly) participated in this study. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) was employed to measure PFC activation during a single-task (performing calculations or stepping) and dual-task (performing both single-tasks at once). Cognitive function was assessed in the older patients with the Trail-making test part B (TMT-B). Major outcomes were task performance, brain activation during task (oxygenated haemoglobin: Oxy-Hb) measured by NIRS, and TMT-B score. Mixed ANOVAs were used to compare task factors and age groups in task performance. Mixed ANOVAs also compared task factors, age group and time factors in task-induced changes in measured Oxy-Hb. Among the older participants, correlations between the TMT-B score and Oxy-Hb values measured in each single-task and in the dual-task were examined using a Pearson correlation coefficient.Oxy-Hb values were significantly increased in both the calculation task and the dual-task within patients in both age groups. However, the Oxy-Hb values associated with there were higher in the older group during the post-task period for the dual-task. Also, there were significant negative correlations between both task-performance accuracy and Oxy-Hb values during the dual-task and participant TMT-B scores.ConclusionsOlder adults demonstrated age-specific PFC activation in response to dual-task challenge. There was also a significant negative correlation between PFC activation during dual-task and executive/attentional function. These findings suggest that the high cognitive load induced by dual-task activity generates increased PFC activity in older adults. However, this relationship appeared to be strongest in participants with better baseline attention and executive functions.

Short Bouts of Intensive Exercise During the Workday Have a Positive Effect on Neuro-cognitive Performance

“…It has been shown previously that the effect of exercise on cortical activity (Brummer et al, 2011;Ohsugi, Ohgi, Shigemori, & Schneider, 2013;Vogt, Schneider, Brummer, & Struder, 2010) and neuro-cognitive performance (Schneider et al, 2013a) are dependent on exercise intensity and biased by individual preferences. The results presented here, namely, an increase in alpha-2 activity, which is a marker of cortical relaxation, as well as an increase in performance index in the decision-making task, could be caused by the exercise intensity, as heart rate was significantly increased compared with all other interventions after the boxing intervention, but might also be affected by the positive bias towards boxing, mainly caused by the novelty of intervention.…”

Dual Task Performance May be a Better Measure of Cognitive Processing in Huntington’s Disease than Traditional Attention Tests

“…Neuroimaging studies have provided some support for the Unitary Resource Theory as they found dual tasks to activate some brain regions (i.e., prefrontal cortex) to a greater extent than the same tasks performed in isolation (37,38).…”

Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy to Study Cerebral Hemodynamics in Older Adults During Cognitive and Motor Tasks: A Review

“…Of the 46 included articles, 13 included a mix of younger and older participants (Heilbronner and Münte, 2013;Ohsugi et al, 2013;Beurskens et al, 2014;Müller et al, 2014;Oboshi et al, 2014;Hernandez et al, 2016;Bierre et al, 2017;Mirelman et al, 2017;Rosso et al, 2017;Hawkins et al, 2018) whereas 29 included only older adults (Doi et al, 2013;Heinzel et al, 2013Heinzel et al, , 2015Niu et al, 2013;Clark et al, 2014;Vermeij et al, 2014;Dupuy et al, 2015;Holtzer et al, 2015Holtzer et al, , 2016Holtzer et al, , 2017aHoltzer et al, ,b, 2018aLaguë-Beauvais et al, 2015;Al-Yahya et al, 2016;Maidan et al, 2016Maidan et al, , 2017Mahoney et al, 2016;Nieuwhof et al, 2016;Osofundiya et al, 2016;Takeuchi et al, 2016;Uemura et al, 2016;Yeung et al, 2016a,b;Chen et al, 2017;Huppert et al, 2017;Verghese et al, 2017;Yap et al, 2017;Halliday et al, 2018;Katzorke et al, 2018;Lucas et al, 2018;Mori et al, 2018;Thumm et al, 2018). Moreover, 26 studies included only cognitively normal participants…”

“…Twenty-four studies performed comparisons of cerebral activation patterns between different groups (either young vs. old, MCI vs. cognitively normal, healthy vs. stroke etc.) (Heilbronner and Münte, 2013;Niu et al, 2013;Ohsugi et al, 2013;Beurskens et al, 2014;Müller et al, 2014;Oboshi et al, 2014;Laguë-Beauvais et al, 2015;Al-Yahya et al, 2016;Hernandez et al, 2016;Maidan et al, 2016Maidan et al, , 2017Mahoney et al, 2016;Osofundiya et al, 2016;Takeuchi et al, 2016;Uemura et al, 2016;Yeung et al, 2016a,b;Bierre et al, 2017;Mirelman et al, 2017;Rosso et al, 2017;Yap et al, 2017;Hawkins et al, 2018;Katzorke et al, 2018;Mori et al, 2018).…”