Frontal recruitment during response inhibition in older adults replicated with fMRI

Abstract

Recent research has explored age-related differences in multiple areas of cognitive functioning using fMRI, PET, and SPECT. However, because these studies used different tasks, subjects, and methods, little is known about whether the results of these studies are generalizable or repeatable. The present study replicated a previous study [Psychol. Aging 17 (2002) 56] NOT THE PUBLISHED VERSION; this is the author's final, peer-reviewed manuscript. The published version may be accessed by following the link in the citation at the bottom of the page.NeuroImage, Vol 20, No. 2 (October 2003): pg. 1384-1392. DOI. This article is © Elsevier and permission has been granted for this version to appear in e-Publications@Marquette. Elsevier does not grant permission for this article to be further copied/distributed or hosted elsewhere without the express permission from Elsevier. 2 using the same Go/No-go task with a subset of 11 of the original older adult subjects, and using the same fMRI scanner and imaging methods. A direct comparison was made between these participants at Time 1 and Time 2 for both behavioral and functional data. These participants were also compared to a new young adult group of 11 participants. Although the current young adult group did not perform as well as the original young adult group, the original finding of enhanced left prefrontal activation in older adults relative to younger adults was replicated. Furthermore, when comparing Time 1 to Time 2, older adults exhibited comparable areas of activation, but significantly greater magnitude of activation at Time 1 in a few clusters. The findings indicate that older adults exhibit more bilateral brain activity during this task than young adults, which appears compensatory and is repeatable over time. The magnitude of regional activation, however, may vary with extraneuronal factors such as signal-to-noise ratio or task experience. This study adds to existing research suggesting that bilateral frontal activation is a predominant finding in the aging literature, and not specific to certain tasks in age group comparisons.

Meditation and Cognitive Ageing: the Role of Mindfulness Meditation in Building Cognitive Reserve

“…Neural compensation refers to the process of recruiting alternative brain networks and structures that are not normally engaged in a certain function. For example, older adults who recruit bilateral (rather than unilateral) prefrontal areas perform better in cognitive tasks than older adults who do not recruit additional brain regions (Cabeza et al 2002;Langenecker and Nielson 2003;Nielson et al 2002;Piefke et al 2012). Such compensatory processes may be enlisted when primary neural networks are no longer able to adequately support successful task performance (ReuterLorenz 2002; Steffener et al 2009), although performance may not be fully maintained.…”

Word Retrieval Failures in Old Age: The Relationship between Structure and Function

“…Although some studies report underrecruitment of the neural regions which are activated in young adults (Logan, Sanders, Snyder, Morris, & Buckner, 2002), others find that older adults recruit new regions which are not typically activated in the young (e.g., Morcom, Good, Frackowiak, & Rugg, 2003;Cabeza, Anderson, Locantore, & McIntosh, 2002). Importantly, differences in functional response are also found when behavioral performance is equivalent between age groups (Morcom, Li, & Rugg, 2007;Langenecker & Nielson, 2003) or when age-related performance differences are methodologically controlled (Morcom et al, 2003), demonstrating that fMRI studies may reveal differences in the nature of older adultsʼ responses, which are not evident from behavioral measures alone.…”

Frontal and Limbic Activation During Inhibitory Control Predicts Treatment Response in Major Depressive Disorder

“…The first hypothesis was that MDD patients would perform less efficiently than the control group on behavioral measures, consistent with our previous findings. The second hypothesis was that MDD patients would exhibit increased activation compared with the control group in areas known to be important for inhibitory control, for example, right inferior frontal, anterior insula, and inferior parietal areas as well as bilateral dorsal AC (Langenecker and Nielson 2003) at comparable levels of performance. It was also expected that the MDD patients would exhibit greater activation for errors of commission compared with the control group in AC and prefrontal areas.…”