Working Memory for Complex Scenes: Age Differences in Frontal and Hippocampal Activations

Age differences in frontal and hippocampal activations in working memory were investigated during a maintenance and subsequent probe interval in an event-related fMRI design. Younger and older adults either viewed or maintained photographs of real-world scenes (extended visual or maintenance conditi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of cognitive neuroscience 2003-11, Vol.15 (8), p.1122-1134
Main Authors: Park, Denise C., Welsh, Robert C., Marshuetz, Christy, Gutchess, Angela H., Mikels, Joseph, Polk, Thad A., Noll, Douglas C., Taylor, Stephan F.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Adult. Elderly
Adults
Age
Aged
Aging - physiology
Anatomical correlates of behavior
Behavioral psychophysiology
Biological and medical sciences
Brain
Brain - physiology
Brain Mapping
Cognition - physiology
Developmental psychology
Female
Frontal Lobe - physiology
Functional Laterality - physiology
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Hippocampus - physiology
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Memory
Memory, Short-Term - physiology
Middle Aged
Neuropsychological Tests
Photic Stimulation
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psychomotor Performance - physiology
Reaction Time
Visual Perception - physiology
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Summary:Age differences in frontal and hippocampal activations in working memory were investigated during a maintenance and subsequent probe interval in an event-related fMRI design. Younger and older adults either viewed or maintained photographs of real-world scenes (extended visual or maintenance conditions) over a 4-sec interval before responding to a probe fragment from the studied picture. Behavioral accuracy was largely equivalent across age and conditions on the probe task, but underlying neural activations differed. Younger but not older adults showed increased left anterior hippocampal activations in the extended visual compared with the maintenance condition. Onthesubsequent probeinterval, however, older adultsshowed more left and right inferior frontal activations than younger adults. The increased frontal activations at probe in older adults may have been compensatory for the decreased hippocampal activations during maintenance, but alternatively could have reflected the increased difficulty of the probe task for the older subjects. Thus, we demonstrate qualitatively different engagement of both frontal and hippocampal structures in older adults in a working memory task, despite behavioral equivalence.
ISSN:0898-929X
1530-8898
DOI:10.1162/089892903322598094