Age trajectories of functional activation under conditions of low and high processing demands: an adult lifespan fMRI study of the aging brain.

ABSTRACT: We examined functional activation across the adult lifespan in 316 healthy adults aged 20-89years on a judgment task that, across conditions, drew upon both semantic knowledge and ability to modulate neural function in response to cognitive challenge. Activation in core regions of the canonical semantic network (e.g., left IFG) were largely age-invariant, consistent with cognitive aging studies that show verbal knowledge is preserved across the lifespan. However, we observed a steady linear increase in activation with age in regions outside the core network, possibly as compensation to maintain function. Under conditions of increased task demands, we observed a stepwise reduction across the lifespan of modulation of activation to increasing task demands in cognitive control regions (fronta

SUBMITTER: Kennedy KM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4252495 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature