Aging effects on memory encoding in the frontal lobes.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to compare frontal-lobe activation in younger and older adults during encoding of words into memory. Participants made semantic or nonsemantic judgments about words. Younger adults exhibited greater activation for semantic relative to nonsemantic judgments in several regions, with the largest activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus. Older adults exhibited greater activation for semantic judgments in the same regions. but the extent of activation was reduced in left prefrontal regions. In older adults, there was a significant association between behavioral tests of declarative and working memory and extent of frontal activation. These results suggest that age-associated decreases in memory ability may be due to decreased frontal-lobe contributions to the initial encoding of experience.
Stebbins
Glenn T
GT
Department of Neurological Sciences, Rush University and Rush-Presbyterian-St Luke's Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois 60612, USA. gstebbin@rush.edu
Carrillo
Maria C
MC
Dorfman
Jennifer
J
Dirksen
Courtney
C
Desmond
John E
JE
Turner
David A
DA
Bennett
David A
DA
Wilson
Robert S
RS
Glover
Gary
G
Gabrieli
John D E
JD
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology*; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D001931:Brain Mapping; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D012660:Semantics; D014706:Verbal Learning / Q000502:physiology*