Older adults benefit from more widespread brain network integration during working memory.

ABSTRACT: Neuroimaging evidence suggests that the aging brain relies on a more distributed set of cortical regions than younger adults in order to maintain successful levels of performance during demanding cognitive tasks. However, it remains unclear how task demands give rise to this age-related expansion in cortical networks. To investigate this issue, functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to measure univariate activity, network connectivity, and cognitive performance in younger and older adults during a working memory (WM) task. Here, individuals performed a WM task in which they held letters online while reordering them alphabetically. WM load was titrated to obtain four individualized difficulty levels with different set sizes. Network integration-defined as the ratio of within-versus

SUBMITTER: Crowell CA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7571507 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature