Mapping neural mechanisms subserving executive control processes across the adult lifespan: a functional network perspective.

执行控制功能是高级认知过程，使人类能够指导和维持其行为以实现当前和未来的目标。在日常生活中，执行控制对于维持和更新这些目标是必要的；抑制对环境干扰的反应；在快速变化的环境突发事件中灵活地调整行为。现在越来越多的人认识到，执行控制是许多大脑区域相互作用的产物。众所周知，执行控制能力在整个成年期都会下降，因此，大脑功能网络内部和之间的发育变化可能是一种神经机制，导致了从年轻到老年的认知变化。有初步证据表明，这些网络内的功能连通性在生命发育过程中发生了变化，但迄今为止，这些网络内部和/或网络之间的变化与执行控制能力的行为变化有关的假设几乎没有经验支持。本提案将(i)使用目标导向认知的相互作用网络模型来描述发生在大规模功能性大脑网络水平上的寿命变化；（ii）调查这些变化是否与特定执行控制过程（工作记忆、抑制和任务切换）的行为表现有关；（iii）探索这些功能性大脑变化是否与生命过程中大脑结构的发育变化有关。

Executive control functions are high-level cognitive processes that enable humans to direct and sustain their behaviour towards attainment of current and future goals. In everyday life executive control is necessary to maintain and update these goals; inhibit responses to distractions in the environment; and to flexibly adapt behaviour in the context of rapidly changing environmental contingencies. It is now increasingly understood that executive control is the product of interactions amongst many brain regions. As executive control is known to decline across the adult lifespan, it follows that developmental changes within and between functional brain networks may be a neural mechanism underlying changes in cognition from younger to older adulthood. There is preliminary evidence of lifespan developmental changes in functional connectivity within these networks, yet there is little empirical support to date for the hypothesis that alterations within and/or between these networks is related to behavioural changes in executive control capacity. This proposal will (i) characterize lifespan changes occurring at the level of large-scale functional brain networks using an interacting network model of goal-directed cognition (ii) investigate whether these changes are related to behavioural performance on measures of specific executive control processes (working memory, inhibition and task-switching) and (iii) explore whether these functional brain changes are associated with developmental changes in brain structure over the life course.