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Anatomical Correlates of Age Related Working Memory Declines
journal contribution
posted on 2012-03-16, 00:00 authored by Evan T. Schulze, Elizabeth K. Geary, Teresa M. Susmaras, James T. Paliga, Pauline M. Maki, Deborah M. LittleAging studies consistently show a relationship between decreased gray matter volume and decreased performance on working
memory tasks. Few aging studies have investigated white matter changes in relation to functional brain changes during working
memory tasks. Twenty-five younger and 25 older adults underwent anatomical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans to measure
gray matter volume, diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to measure fractional anisotropy (FA) as a measure of white matter integrity,
and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while performing a working memory task. Significant increases in activation (fMRI) were seen in the left dorsal and ventral lateral prefrontal cortex with increased working memory load and with
increased age (older showing greater bilateral activation). Partial correlational analyses revealed that even after controlling for age, frontal FA correlated significantly with fMRI activation during performance on the working memory task. These findings highlight the importance of white matter integrity in working memory performance associated with normal aging.
Funding
This work was supported by NIH Grant no. R21 AG028662 (PI: D. M. Little) from the National Institute on Aging, the University of Illinois College of Medicine (D. M. Little), and the Kravis Leadership Institute at Claremont McKenna College (J. T. Paliga). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institute of Aging, Department of Veterans Affairs, United States Government, University of Illinois at Chicago, Texas A&M, or Duke University.
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Publisher Statement
Copyright © 2011 Evan T. Schulze et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. doi:10.4061/2011/606871Publisher
SAGE-Hindawi Access to ResearchLanguage
- en_US
issn
2090-2204Issue date
2011-08-01Usage metrics
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