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Neural capacity limits on the responses to memory interference during working memory in young and old adults

Advancing age affects the recruitment of task related neural resources thereby changing the efficiency, capacity and use of compensatory processes. With advancing age, brain activity may therefore increase within a region or be reorganized to utilize different brain regions. The different brain regi...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Steffener, Jason, Barulli, Daniel, Hill, Brianna
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7410196/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32760113
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236897
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author Steffener, Jason
Barulli, Daniel
Hill, Brianna
author_facet Steffener, Jason
Barulli, Daniel
Hill, Brianna
author_sort Steffener, Jason
collection PubMed
description Advancing age affects the recruitment of task related neural resources thereby changing the efficiency, capacity and use of compensatory processes. With advancing age, brain activity may therefore increase within a region or be reorganized to utilize different brain regions. The different brain regions may be exclusive to old adults or accessible to young and old alike, but non-optimal. Interference during verbal working memory information retention recruits parahippocampal brain regions in young adults similar to brain activity recruited by old adults in the absence of external interference. The current work tests the hypothesis that old adults recruit neural resources to combat increases in age-related intrinsic noise that young adults recruit during high levels of interference during information retention. This experiment administered a verbal delayed item recognition task with low and high levels of an interfering addition task during information maintenance. Despite strong age-related behavioral effects, brain imaging results demonstrated no significant interaction effects between age group and the interference or memory tasks. Significant effects were only found for the interaction between interference level and memory load within the inferior frontal cortex, supplementary motor cortex and posterior supramarginal regions. Results demonstrate that neural resources were shared when facing increasing memory load and interference. The combined cognitive demands resulted in brain activity reaching a neural capacity limit which was similar for both age groups and which brain activation did not increase above. Despite significant behavioral differences the neural capacity limited the detection of age group differences in brain activity.
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spelling pubmed-74101962020-08-13 Neural capacity limits on the responses to memory interference during working memory in young and old adults Steffener, Jason Barulli, Daniel Hill, Brianna PLoS One Research Article Advancing age affects the recruitment of task related neural resources thereby changing the efficiency, capacity and use of compensatory processes. With advancing age, brain activity may therefore increase within a region or be reorganized to utilize different brain regions. The different brain regions may be exclusive to old adults or accessible to young and old alike, but non-optimal. Interference during verbal working memory information retention recruits parahippocampal brain regions in young adults similar to brain activity recruited by old adults in the absence of external interference. The current work tests the hypothesis that old adults recruit neural resources to combat increases in age-related intrinsic noise that young adults recruit during high levels of interference during information retention. This experiment administered a verbal delayed item recognition task with low and high levels of an interfering addition task during information maintenance. Despite strong age-related behavioral effects, brain imaging results demonstrated no significant interaction effects between age group and the interference or memory tasks. Significant effects were only found for the interaction between interference level and memory load within the inferior frontal cortex, supplementary motor cortex and posterior supramarginal regions. Results demonstrate that neural resources were shared when facing increasing memory load and interference. The combined cognitive demands resulted in brain activity reaching a neural capacity limit which was similar for both age groups and which brain activation did not increase above. Despite significant behavioral differences the neural capacity limited the detection of age group differences in brain activity. Public Library of Science 2020-08-06 /pmc/articles/PMC7410196/ /pubmed/32760113 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236897 Text en © 2020 Steffener et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Steffener, Jason
Barulli, Daniel
Hill, Brianna
Neural capacity limits on the responses to memory interference during working memory in young and old adults
title Neural capacity limits on the responses to memory interference during working memory in young and old adults
title_full Neural capacity limits on the responses to memory interference during working memory in young and old adults
title_fullStr Neural capacity limits on the responses to memory interference during working memory in young and old adults
title_full_unstemmed Neural capacity limits on the responses to memory interference during working memory in young and old adults
title_short Neural capacity limits on the responses to memory interference during working memory in young and old adults
title_sort neural capacity limits on the responses to memory interference during working memory in young and old adults
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7410196/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32760113
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236897
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