Remembering associations between encoded items and their contextual setting is a feature of episodic memory. Although this ability generally deteriorates with age, there is substantial variability in how older individuals perform on episodic memory tasks. A current topic of debate in the cognitive neuroscience of aging literature revolves around whether this variability may stem from genetic and/or environmental factors related to reserve, allowing some individuals to compensate for age-related decline through differential recruitment of brain regions. In this fMRI study spanning a large adult lifespan sample (N = 154), we tested whether higher cognitive reserve was associated with better task-fMRI context memory performance, and functional compensatory activity patterns in the aging brain. We used multivariate Behaviour Partial Least Squares (B-PLS) analysis to examine how age, retrieval accuracy, and a proxy measure of cognitive reserve [i.e., a composite score consisting of years of education (EDU) and crystallized IQ], impacted brain activity during the encoding and retrieval of spatial and temporal contextual details. The results indicated that age-related increases in encoding activity within anterior and lateral frontal, inferior parietal, occipito-temporal and medial temporal cortices, was correlated with better subsequent memory performance; and may be indicative of age-related functional compensation at encoding. Interestingly this compensatory pattern was not correlated with our proxy measure of cognitive reserve but was associated with total brain volume (a measure of brain reserve). However, cognitive reserve was associated with age-invariant and task-general activity in superior temporal, occipital, and left inferior frontal regions. We conclude that the relationship between cognitive reserve, brain reserve and age-related functional compensation is complex, and that EDU and IQ may not fully account for individual differences in cognitive reserve when studying well educated, healthy aging cohorts.

记住编码项及其上下文设置之间的关联是情节记忆的特征。尽管这种能力通常会随着年龄的增长而降低，但是年龄较大的人在情景记忆任务中的表现却存在很大差异。衰老文献的认知神经科学中当前的辩论主题是，这种变异性是否可能源于与储备相关的遗传和/或环境因素，从而允许某些个体通过大脑区域的差异募集来补偿与年龄相关的衰落。在这项涵盖大量成人寿命样本（N = 154）的功能性磁共振成像研究中，我们测试了较高的认知储备是否与更好的任务功能性磁共振成像上下文记忆性能以及衰老的大脑中的功能性补偿活动模式有关。我们使用多元行为偏最小二乘（B-PLS）分析来检查年龄，检索准确性和认知储备的代理指标（即，由受教育年限（EDU）和结晶智商组成的综合评分）如何影响大脑活动在对空间和时间上下文细节进行编码和检索期间。结果表明，年龄相关的前额和外侧额叶，顶下壁，枕颞叶和颞内侧皮质的编码活动增加与随后的较好记忆表现有关。并且可以指示编码时与年龄有关的功能补偿。有趣的是，这种补偿模式与我们的认知储备的代理指标无关，但与总的大脑容量（大脑储备的指标）相关。然而，认知储备与颞上，枕骨和左下额叶区域的年龄不变和任务一般活动有关。我们得出结论，认知储备，脑储备和与年龄相关的功能补偿之间的关系很复杂，并且在研究受过良好教育的健康衰老队列时，EDU和IQ可能无法完全解释认知储备的个体差异。