Age-related Prefrontal Compensation in Long-term Memory

描述（由申请人提供）：本提案研究了前额叶（RFC）活动增加对长期记忆中内侧颞叶（MTL）随年龄下降的补偿机制。我提出了三个与事件相关的fMRI实验，以确定RFC增加的潜力，以支持在年龄相关损伤领域的成功表现。实验1将通过神经心理学和形态计量学测量来确定RFC激活的增加是否与MTL功能的下降有关。MTL功能较差的老年人比MTL功能较好的老年人激活RFC更多，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研究的是与年龄相关的关系编码和区分真假记忆能力的下降。由于这些任务对MTL的负荷很大，我们预计在成功的试验中，老年人的RFC会相对于年轻人增加。实验3探讨了当神经区域受衰老影响较小时，老年人是否能获得年龄不变的表现。对于成功的自我参照编码，年龄相关的补偿应该通过增加老年人的内侧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.