Age-related Prefrontal Compensation in Long-term Memory

描述（由申请人提供）：该提案调查了额外的前额叶（RFC）活动补偿随年龄增长的长期记忆中内侧颞叶（MTL）下降的机制。我提出了三个事件相关的功能磁共振成像实验，以确定增加RFC的潜力，以支持成功的表现在域的年龄相关的损害。实验1将使用神经心理学和形态测量方法确定RFC激活增加是否与MTL功能降低有关。MTL功能较差的老年人比MTL功能较好的老年人更多地激活RFC，这一模式支持了额外的RFC激活可以补偿随着年龄增长而出现的MTL功能较差。实验1和2解决了与年龄相关的关系编码下降和辨别真假记忆的能力。由于这些任务对MTL的负荷很大，我们预计老年人将增加RFC相对于年轻人的成功试验。实验3探讨了老年人在神经区域受年龄影响较小的情况下是否能实现年龄不变的表现。对于成功的自我参照编码，年龄相关的补偿应通过增加中老年人的内侧RFC激活来实现。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): 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.