Sensitivity of negative subsequent memory and task-negative effects to age and associative memory performance

Abstract

The present fMRI experiment employed associative recognition to investigate the relationships between age and encoding-related negative subsequent memory effects and task-negative effects. Young, middle-aged and older adults (total n = 136) were scanned while they made relational judgments on visually presented word pairs. In a later memory test, the participants made associative recognition judgments on studied, rearranged (items studied on different trials) and new pairs. Several regions, mostly localized to the default mode network, demonstrated negative subsequent memory effects in an across age-group analysis. All but one of these regions also demonstrated task-negative effects, although there was no correlation between the size of the respective effects. Whereas negative subsequent memory effects demonstrated a graded attenuation with age, task-negative effects declined markedly between the young and the middle-aged group, but showed no further reduction in the older group. Negative subsequent memory effects did not correlate with memory performance within any age group. By contrast, in the older group only, task-negative effects predicted later memory performance. The findings demonstrate that negative subsequent memory and task-negative effects depend on dissociable neural mechanisms and likely reflect distinct cognitive processes. The relationship between task-negative effects and memory performance in the older group might reflect the sensitivity of these effects to variations in amount of age-related neuropathology.

The neural correlates of recollection and retrieval monitoring: Relationships with age and recollection performance

“…In either case, one might anticipate identifying relationships between neural activity and memory performance that are unique to, or stronger in older than in young individuals. We have recently reported such findings from the encoding phase of the present study (de Chastelaine et al, 2015, 2016). To anticipate the present results, in contrast to those findings, here we find no evidence that relationships between individual differences in retrieval-related activity and memory performance are modified by age.…”

“…As in our prior reports (de Chastelaine et al, 2011, 2015, 2016; see also King et al, 2015), recollection accuracy was indexed as the difference between the proportion of intact test pairs correctly endorsed as intact (associative hits) and the proportion of rearranged test pairs incorrectly judged intact (associative false alarms). Table 2 provides a summary of associative recognition performance for each age group.…”

“…Data from the encoding phase of this experiment were reported in two prior publications (de Chastelaine et al, 2015, 2016), where additional description of the experimental procedures and methods can be found.…”

“…Functional images were motion and slice-time corrected, realigned, and spatially normalized using a sample-specific template (see de Chastelaline et al, 2015, for further details) based on the MNI reference brain (Cocosco et al 1997). Images were resampled into 3 mm isotropic voxels and smoothed with an isotropic 8 mm full-width half-maximum Gaussian kernel.…”

“…We elected to investigate associative memory because it is strongly dependent on episodic recollection (e.g., Mickes et al, 2010) and thus is a relatively ‘process-pure’ memory test. In addition, associative memory is highly sensitive to age (Old & Naveh-Benjamin, 2008), and the neural correlates of the encoding of associative information are already known to differ according to age (de Chastelaine et al, 2011, 2015, 2016; Miller et al, 2008). Three prior fMRI studies examining the effects of age on the neural correlates of episodic retrieval also employed an associative memory procedure (Oedekoven et al, 2013; Dulas & Duarte, 2016; Wang & Giovanello, 2016).…”