Age-related Prefrontal Compensation in Long-term Memory

描述(由申请人提供)：这项建议调查额外的前额叶(RFC)活动补偿内侧颞叶(MTL)随年龄下降的长期记忆的机制。我提出了三个与事件相关的功能磁共振实验，以确定RFC增加的可能性，以支持在年龄相关损害领域的成功表现。实验1将使用神经心理学和形态计量学方法来确定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的模式支持了额外的RFC激活可以补偿MTL功能随年龄的变化。实验1和实验2解决了关系编码和辨别真实记忆与虚假记忆能力随年龄增长而下降的问题。由于这些任务对MTL的负担很大，我们预计老年人将相对于年轻人增加RFC以获得成功的试验。实验3探讨了当神经区域受老化影响较小时，老年人是否实现了年龄不变的表现。对于成功的自我参照编码，与年龄相关的补偿应该通过增加老年人的中间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.