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Age-related changes to the neural correlates of working memory which emerge after midlife

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posted on 2024-07-26, 13:58 authored by Helen Macpherson, David WhiteDavid White, Kathryn A. Ellis, Con StoughCon Stough, David Camfield, Richard SilbersteinRichard Silberstein, Andrew PipingasAndrew Pipingas
Previous research has indicated that the neural processes which underlie working memory change with age. Both age-related increases and decreases to cortical activity have been reported. This study investigated which stages of working memory are most vulnerable to age-related changes after midlife. To do this we examined age-differences in the 13 Hz steady state visually evoked potential (SSVEP) associated with a spatial working memory delayed response task. Participants were 130 healthy adults separated into a midlife (40-60 years) and an older group (61-82 years). Relative to the midlife group, older adults demonstrated greater bilateral frontal activity during encoding and this pattern of activity was related to better working memory performance. In contrast, evidence of age-related under activation was identified over left frontal regions during retrieval. Findings from this study suggest that after midlife, under-activation of frontal regions during retrieval contributes to age-related decline in working memory performance.

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ISSN

1663-4365

Journal title

Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience

Volume

6

Issue

APR

Article number

article no. 70

Pagination

9 pp

Publisher

Frontiers Research Foundation

Copyright statement

Copyright © 2014 Macpherson, White, Ellis, Stough, Camfield, Silberstein and Pipingas. This an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Language

eng

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