The Aging Brain and Executive Functions Revisited: Implications from Meta-analytic and Functional-Connectivity Evidence

Abstract

Healthy aging is associated with changes in cognitive performance, including executive functions (EFs) and their associated brain activation patterns. However, it has remained unclear which EF-related brain regions are affected consistently, because the results of pertinent neuroimaging studies and earlier meta-analyses vary considerably. We, therefore, conducted new rigorous meta-analyses of published age differences in EF-related brain activity. Out of a larger set of regions associated with EFs, only the left inferior frontal junction and the left anterior cuneus/precuneus were found to show consistent age differences. To further characterize these two age-sensitive regions, we performed seed-based resting-state functional connectivity (RS-FC) analyses using fMRI data from a large adult sample with a wide age range. We also assessed associations of the two regions' whole-brain RS-FC patterns with age and EF performance. Although functional profiling and RS-FC analyses point toward a domain-general role of the left inferior frontal junction in EFs, the pattern of individual study contributions to the meta-analytic results suggests process-specific modulations by age. Our analyses further indicate that the left anterior cuneus/precuneus is recruited differently by older (compared with younger) adults during EF tasks, potentially reflecting inefficiencies in switching the attentional focus. Overall, our findings question earlier meta-analytic results and suggest a larger heterogeneity of age-related differences in brain activity associated with EFs. Hence, they encourage future research that pays greater attention to replicability, investigates age-related differences in deactivation, and focuses on more narrowly defined EF subprocesses, combining multiple behavioral assessments with multimodal imaging.

Overview of (f)MRI Studies of Cognitive Aging for Non-Experts: Looking through the Lens of Neuroimaging

“…This view is at least partly consistent with the classic inhibition-deficit hypothesis which assumes that age-related cognitive decline comes from a specific degradation of inhibitory function in aging [ 199 , 200 ] which may be supported by a frontal hypothesis in aging [ 86 , 201 ], although this idea has not reached a consensus in this era [ 202 , 203 , 204 ]. Studies of numerous participants with a wide age range consistently reported that prefrontal and parietal regions including regions in the FPCN and DAN decreased most prominently in volume in normal aging [ 96 , 205 ].…”

Split-half reliability estimates of an online card sorting task in a community sample of young and elderly adults

“…The WCST and its variants have widespread usage in cognitive aging or normative studies (Esposito et al, 1999 ; Faria et al, 2015 ; Hartman et al, 2001 ; Heckner et al, 2021 ; Lineweaver et al, 1999 ; Marquine et al, 2021 ; Perez-Enriquez et al, 2021 ; Sanchez-Rodriguez et al, 2022 ; Shan et al, 2008 ). Most of those studies support age differences in the WCST measures, which is consistent with our findings.…”

“…WCST and its variants also rank as the seventh most frequently used neurocognitive tool to evaluate executive functions in aging (Faria et al, 2015). The age-related performance decline on WCST measures was expected and supported by behavior (Haaland et al, 1987;Lineweaver et al, 1999;Marquine et al, 2021;Perez-Enriquez et al, 2021) and neuroimaging studies (Esposito et al, 1999;Heckner et al, 2021). However, there was also evidence that WCST was not sensitive to aging in the Taiwanese population (Shan et al, 2008).…”

Inhibition, Shifting and Updating: Inter and intra-domain commonalities and differences from an executive functions activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis

“…Plausibly, the training of one domain or paradigm may effectively transfer to the improvement of other cognitive processes that share larger neural substrates (see Nguyen et al 2019 ). It is anticipated that the transfer effects may be different across development as the neural commonalities and discrepancies among executive domains change with aging ( Diamond, 2013 ;Heckner et al, 2021 ;Zhang et al, 2021 ).…”