Abstract

This proposal investigates the mechanisms through which additional prefrontal (RFC) activity compensates for medial temporal (MTL) declines in long-term memory with age. I propose three event-related fMRI experiments to identify the potential for increased RFC to support successful performance in domains of age-related impairment. Experiment 1 will establish whether the increased RFC activation is linked to decreased MTL function using both neuropsychological and morphometric measures. A pattern whereby those elderly adults with poorer MTL function activate RFC more than those with better MTL function provides support that additional RFC activations can compensate for poor MTL function with age. Experiments 1 and 2 address age-related declines in relational encoding and the ability to discriminate false from true memories. Because these tasks load heavily on MTL, we expect that the elderly will increase RFC relative to young adults for successful trials. Experiment 3 explores whether the elderly achieve age-invariant performance when neural regions are less affected by aging. For successful self-referential encoding, age-related compensation should be achieved by increasing medial RFC activation in the elderly.

  Funding Agency

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Aging (NIA)
Type
Postdoctoral Individual National Research Service Award (F32)
Project #
5F32AG026920-02
Application #
7093172
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1-F12A (20))
Program Officer
Wagster, Molly V
Project Start
2005-07-01
Project End
2008-06-30
Budget Start
2006-07-01
Budget End
2007-06-30
Support Year
2
Fiscal Year
2006
Total Cost
$48,796
Indirect Cost

  Institution

Name
Massachusetts General Hospital
Department
Type
DUNS #
073130411
City
Boston
State
MA
Country
United States
Zip Code
02199

  Publications

Gutchess, Angela H; Schacter, Daniel L (2012) The neural correlates of gist-based true and false recognition. Neuroimage 59:3418-26
Gutchess, Angela H; Kensinger, Elizabeth A; Schacter, Daniel L (2010) Functional neuroimaging of self-referential encoding with age. Neuropsychologia 48:211-9
Kensinger, Elizabeth A; Gutchess, Angela H; Schacter, Daniel L (2007) Effects of aging and encoding instructions on emotion-induced memory trade-offs. Psychol Aging 22:781-95
Gutchess, Angela H; Hebrank, Andrew; Sutton, Bradley P et al. (2007) Contextual interference in recognition memory with age. Neuroimage 35:1338-47
Gutchess, Angela H; Ieuji, Yoko; Federmeier, Kara D (2007) Event-related potentials reveal age differences in the encoding and recognition of scenes. J Cogn Neurosci 19:1089-103
Gutchess, Angela H; Kensinger, Elizabeth A; Schacter, Daniel L (2007) Aging, self-referencing, and medial prefrontal cortex. Soc Neurosci 2:117-33
Gutchess, Angela H; Kensinger, Elizabeth A; Yoon, Carolyn et al. (2007) Ageing and the self-reference effect in memory. Memory 15:822-37