Variable effects of aging on frontal lobe contributions to memory

Rosen, Allyson; Prull, Matthew W.; O’Hara, Ruth; Race, Elizabeth; Desmond, John E.; Glover, Gary H.; Yesavage, Jerome A.; Gabrieli, John D. E.

doi:10.1097/00001756-200212200-00010

Cited by 185 publications

(134 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…These results provide a strong basis for arguing that the increased allocation of resources to novel stimuli observed in cognitively high performing old adults does not simply represent less efficient processing, but a successful compensatory mechanism, perhaps in response to other age-related declines in neurophysiological functioning. Our findings are consistent with those results from the functional imaging literature that have shown that old subjects who perform comparably to young subjects on source or episodic memory tasks recruit more brain activity than young subjects, and than old subjects who perform worse (Cabeza et al, 2002;Reuter-Lorenz et al, 2000;Rosen et al, 2002) (but see Nielson et al (2002) and Logan et al (2002), whose data indicate that this pattern is not associated with all cognitive functions). Of note, the age-related anterior shift in scalp distribution of the novelty P3 was not different for the cognitively high and average performing old subjects, suggesting that these groups process novelty by relying on a similar underlying neural system, but differ mainly in terms of the amount of resources appropriated.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…Although recently there has been a number of studies comparing the neural activity of higher and lower performing old subjects to that of a group of young subjects (Cabeza et al, 2002;Duarte et al, 2006;Rosano et al, 2005;Rosen et al, 2002), only a few reports have taken into account differences in neural activity between groups of young subjects that differed in performance (e.g., Fjell and Walhovd, 2005;Madden et al, 2004;Stern et al, 2004). Without such a comparison group, it is difficult to be sure whether the differences between high and average performing old subjects are related to age, or reflect different levels of performance that would be observed for any age group.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Compensatory neural activity distinguishes different patterns of normal cognitive aging

et al. 2008

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Most cognitive neuroscientific research exploring the nature of age-associated compensatory mechanisms has compared old adults (high vs. average performers) to young adults (not split by performance), leaving ambiguous whether findings are truly age-related or reflect differences between high and average performers throughout the lifespan. Here, we examined differences in neural activity (as measured by ERPs) that were generated by high vs. average performing old, middle-age, and young adults while processing novel and target events to investigate the following three questions: 1) Are differences between cognitively high and average performing subjects in the allocation of processing resources (as indexed by P3 amplitude) specific to old subjects, or found throughout the adult lifespan? 2) Are differences between cognitively high and average performing subjects in speed of processing (as indexed by target P3 latency) of similar magnitude throughout the adult lifespan? 3) Where along the information processing stream does the compensatory neural activity attributed to cognitively high performing old subjects begin to take place? Our results suggest that high performing old adults successfully manage the task by a compensatory neural mechanism associated with the modulation of controlled processing and the allocation of more resources, whereas high performing younger subjects execute the task more efficiently with fewer resources. Differences between cognitively high and average performers in processing speed increase with age. Middle-age seems to be a critical stage in which substantial differences in neural activity between high and average performers emerge. These findings provide strong evidence for different patterns of agerelated changes in the processing of salient environmental stimuli, with cognitive status serving as a key mediating variable.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Compensatory neural activity distinguishes different patterns of normal cognitive aging

et al. 2008

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“…Compensatory recruitment of additional brain areas likely requires integrity of the corpus callosum, and smaller corpora callosa would be associated with poorer performance. The cooperation hypothesis is supported by reaction time studies showing that older participants profited more from bilateral stimulation conditions, requiring callosal transfer, than from unilateral conditions (Reuter-Lorenz and Stanczak, 2000;Reuter-Lorenz et al, 1999), and by functional imaging studies showing bilateral activation in high but not low performing older adults Rosen et al, 2002). In addition, whether callosal interhemispheric interaction is inhibitory or cooperative may likely depend on task demands, task complexity and the specific process (e.g., inhibition vs. facilitation) and lateralization of functions (e.g., verbal-spatial, local-global).…”

Section: Lateralized Processing and Agementioning

confidence: 93%

Local–global interference is modulated by age, sex and anterior corpus callosum size

et al. 2007

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To identify attentional and neural mechanisms affecting global and local feature extraction, we devised a global-local hierarchical letter paradigm to test the hypothesis that aging reduces functional cerebral lateralization through corpus callosum (CC) degradation. Participants (37 men and women, 26-79 years) performed a task requiring global, local, or global+local attention and underwent structural MRI for CC measurement. Although reaction time (RT) slowed with age, all participants had faster RTs to local than global targets. This local precedence effect together with greater interference from incongruent local information and greater response conflict from local targets each correlated with older age and smaller callosal genu (anterior) areas. These findings support the hypothesis that the CC mediates lateralized local-global processes by inhibition of task-irrelevant information under selective attention conditions. Further, with advancing age smaller genu size leads to less robust inhibition, thereby reducing cerebral lateralization and permitting interference to influence processing. Sex was an additional modifier of interference, in that callosum-interference relationships were evident in women but not in men. Regardless of age, smaller splenium (posterior) areas correlated with less response facilitation from repetition priming of global targets in men, but with greater response facilitation from repetition priming of local targets in women. Our data indicate the following dissociation: Anterior callosal structure was associated with inhibitory processes (i.e., interference from incongruency and response conflict), which are vulnerable to the effects of age and sex, whereas posterior callosal structure was associated with facilitation processes from repetition priming dependent on sex and independent of age.

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“…Recently, Cabeza et al (2002) proposed that high-scoring elders, compared with low-performing elders and young subjects, engaged the PFC bilaterally to a functionally useful degree in a source memory task. High-scoring elders also showed preserved left frontal and enhanced right frontal activity versus the young during encoding (Rosen et al, 2002). Using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, the PFC activity observed during encoding, predicting subsequent successful recognition, was left-lateralized in young subjects but bilateral in older subjects (Morcom et al, 2003).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Age-Related Functional Changes of Prefrontal Cortex in Long-Term Memory: A Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study

Rossi¹,

Miniussi²,

Pasqualetti³

et al. 2004

J. Neurosci.

164

134

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Neuroimaging findings suggest that the lateralization of prefrontal cortex activation associated with episodic memory performance is reduced by aging. It is still a matter of debate whether this loss of asymmetry during encoding and retrieval reflects compensatory mechanisms or de-differentiation processes. We addressed this issue by the transient interference produced by repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), which directly assesses causal relationships between performance and stimulated regions. We compared the effects of rTMS (a rapid-rate train occurring simultaneously to the presentation of memoranda) applied to the left or right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) on visuospatial recognition memory in 66 healthy subjects divided in two classes of age (Ͻ45 and Ͼ50 years).In young subjects, rTMS of the right DLPFC interfered with retrieval more than left DLPFC stimulation. The asymmetry of the effect progressively vanished with aging, as indicated by bilateral interference effects on recognition performance. Conversely, the predominance of left DLPFC effect during encoding was not abolished in elders, thus probing its causal role for encoding along the life span. Findings confirm that the neural correlates of retrieval modify along aging, suggesting that the bilateral engagement of the DLPFC has a compensatory role on the elders' episodic memory performance.

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Variable effects of aging on frontal lobe contributions to memory

Cited by 185 publications

References 24 publications

Compensatory neural activity distinguishes different patterns of normal cognitive aging

Compensatory neural activity distinguishes different patterns of normal cognitive aging

Local–global interference is modulated by age, sex and anterior corpus callosum size

Age-Related Functional Changes of Prefrontal Cortex in Long-Term Memory: A Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Study

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