Neural distinctiveness declines with age in auditory cortex and is associated with auditory GABA levels.

ABSTRACT: Neural activation patterns in the ventral visual cortex in response to different categories of visual stimuli (e.g., faces vs. houses) are less selective, or distinctive, in older adults than in younger adults, a phenomenon known as age-related neural dedifferentiation. In this study, we investigated whether neural dedifferentiation extends to the auditory cortex. Inspired by previous animal work, we also investigated whether individual differences in GABA are associated with individual differences in neural distinctiveness in humans. 20 healthy young adults (ages 18-29) and 23 healthy older adults (over 65) completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan, during which neural activity was estimated while they listened to music and foreign speech. GABA levels in the auditory,

SUBMITTER: Lalwani P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6765441 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature