The long-term goal of this project is to identify the patterns of age-related change and constancy in the functioning of neural systems that mediate cognitive abilities, especially attention and memory. Recent findings from the present project, based on measures of neural activation obtained from positron emission tomography, suggest that aging is associated with both decreases and increases in regional activation. The proposed research will test healthy, community-dwelling younger and older adults, using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), to address the following issues: age differences in the shape of the neural hemodynamic response (HDR) waveform, measured from fMRI, in various brain regions (Experiment 1); the role of strategy and memory demands in eliciting age-related increases in prefrontal activation (Experiments 2-3); the relative contributions of top-down and bottom-up attentional processing to age differences in visual search performance (Experiments 4-5); age-related changes in the neural basis of inhibition of response-incompatible information (Experiments 6-7); the differential pattern of prefrontal activation for episodic and semantic memory retrieval processes (Experiment 8); and the neural correlates of age-related declines in episodic encoding and retrieval success (Experiments 9-10). Across all of the experiments, analyses of the temporal characteristics of the HDR functions will be conducted, which will assist the interpretation of age differences within task conditions, as well as the characterization of the relation between neural activation and cognitive performance. The project is designed to provide new information regarding the age-related changes in neural functioning that occur independently of significant disease. The findings will be relevant to the development of functional neuroimaging techniques that can aid in the diagnosis of significant and abnormal cognitive impairment.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Aging (NIA)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01AG011622-10
Application #
6649687
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1-IFCN-1 (03))
Program Officer
Wagster, Molly V
Project Start
1993-09-30
Project End
2006-08-31
Budget Start
2003-09-01
Budget End
2004-08-31
Support Year
10
Fiscal Year
2003
Total Cost
$536,750
Indirect Cost
Name
Duke University
Department
Psychiatry
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
044387793
City
Durham
State
NC
Country
United States
Zip Code
27705
Madden, David J; Bennett, Ilana J; Burzynska, Agnieszka et al. (2012) Diffusion tensor imaging of cerebral white matter integrity in cognitive aging. Biochim Biophys Acta 1822:386-400
Davis, Simon W; Kragel, James E; Madden, David J et al. (2012) The architecture of cross-hemispheric communication in the aging brain: linking behavior to functional and structural connectivity. Cereb Cortex 22:232-42
Bennett, Ilana J; Madden, David J; Vaidya, Chandan J et al. (2011) White matter integrity correlates of implicit sequence learning in healthy aging. Neurobiol Aging 32:2317.e1-12
Madden, David J; Costello, Matthew C; Dennis, Nancy A et al. (2010) Adult age differences in functional connectivity during executive control. Neuroimage 52:643-57
Bucur, Barbara; Madden, David J (2010) Effects of adult age and blood pressure on executive function and speed of processing. Exp Aging Res 36:153-68
Henninger, Debra E; Madden, David J; Huettel, Scott A (2010) Processing speed and memory mediate age-related differences in decision making. Psychol Aging 25:262-70
Costello, Matthew C; Madden, David J; Shepler, Anne M et al. (2010) Age-related preservation of top-down control over distraction in visual search. Exp Aging Res 36:249-72
Costello, Matthew C; Madden, David J; Mitroff, Stephen R et al. (2010) Age-related decline of visual processing components in change detection. Psychol Aging 25:356-68
Bennett, Ilana J; Madden, David J; Vaidya, Chandan J et al. (2010) Age-related differences in multiple measures of white matter integrity: A diffusion tensor imaging study of healthy aging. Hum Brain Mapp 31:378-90
Madden, David J; Spaniol, Julia; Costello, Matthew C et al. (2009) Cerebral white matter integrity mediates adult age differences in cognitive performance. J Cogn Neurosci 21:289-302

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