title: Contextual interference in recognition memory with age.
abstract: Previous behavioral research suggests that although elderly adults' memory benefits from supportive context, misleading or irrelevant contexts produce greater interference. In the present study, we use event-related fMRI to investigate age differences when processing contextual information to make recognition judgments. Twenty-one young and twenty elderly incidentally encoded pictures of objects presented in meaningful contexts, and completed a memory test for the objects presented in identical or novel contexts. Elderly committed more false alarms than young when novel objects were presented in familiar, but task-irrelevant, contexts. Elderly showed reduced engagement of bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate relative to young, reflecting disruption of a cognitive control network for processing context with age. Disruption occurred for both high and low-performing elderly, suggesting that cognitive control deficits are pervasive with age. Despite showing disruption of the cognitive control network, high-performing elderly recruited additional middle and medial frontal regions that were not recruited by either low-performing elderly or young adults. This suggests that high-performing elderly may compensate for the disruption of the cognitive control network by recruiting additional frontal resources to overcome cognitive control deficits that affect recognition memory.
authors.affiliation: Beckman Institute, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA. gutchess@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu <gutchess@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu>
authors.forename: Angela H
authors.initials: AH
authors.lastname: Gutchess
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Hebrank
authors.forename: Bradley P
authors.initials: BP
authors.lastname: Sutton
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Leshikar
authors.forename: Michael W L
authors.initials: MW
authors.lastname: Chee
authors.forename: Jiat Chow
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Tan
authors.forename: Joshua O S
authors.initials: JO
authors.lastname: Goh
authors.forename: Denise C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Park
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000502:physiology*