Top-down attention and Alzheimer's pathology impact cortical selectivity during learning, influencing episodic memory in older adults.

ABSTRACT: Human aging affects the ability to remember new experiences, in part, because of altered neural function during memory formation. One potential contributor to age-related memory decline is diminished neural selectivity -- i.e., a decline in the differential response of cortical regions to preferred vs. non-preferred stimuli during event perception -- yet the factors driving variability in neural selectivity with age remain unclear. We examined the impact of top-down attention and preclinical Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology on neural selectivity during memory encoding in 156 cognitively unimpaired older participants who underwent fMRI while performing a word-face and word-scene associative memory task. Neural selectivity in face- and place-selective cortical regions was greater during ev

SUBMITTER: Sheng J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11661099 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature