Some prior research has found that older adults are more susceptible to proactive interference than young adults. The current study investigated whether age-related deficits in pFC-mediated cognitive control processes that act to detect and resolve interference underlie increased susceptibility to proactive interference in an associative memory task. Young and older adults were scanned while tasked with remembering which associate (face or scene) objects were paired with most recently during study, under conditions of high, low, or no proactive interference. After scanning, participants' memory was tested for varying levels of episodic detail about the pairings (i.e., target category vs. specific target category vs. specific target associate). Young and older adults were similarly susceptible to proactive interference. Memory for both the general target category and the specific target associate worsened as the level of proactive interference increased, with no robust age differences. For both young and older adults, the left ventrolateral pFC, which has been indicated in controlled retrieval of goal-relevant conceptual representations, was sensitive to increasing levels of interference during encoding but was insensitive to associative memory accuracy. Consistent with the Compensation-Related Utilization of Neural Circuits Hypothesis model of cognitive aging, the ventromedial pFC, which is involved in the monitoring of internally generated information, was recruited more by older than young adults to support the successful retrieval of target–object pairs at lower levels of proactive interference. Collectively, these results suggest that some older adults are able to engage in the cognitive control processes necessary to resolve proactive interference to the same extent as young adults.

一些先前的研究发现，老年人比年轻人更容易受到主动干扰。目前的研究调查了 pFC 介导的认知控制过程中与年龄相关的缺陷是否会增加对联想记忆任务中主动干扰的敏感性。在研究期间，在高、低或无主动干扰的条件下，对年轻人和老年人进行扫描，同时负责记住最近与哪些关联（面部或场景）对象配对。扫描后，参与者的记忆被测试了关于配对的不同级别的情节细节（即目标类别与特定目标类别与特定目标关联）。年轻人和老年人同样容易受到主动干扰。随着主动干扰水平的增加，一般目标类别和特定目标关联的记忆都恶化了，没有明显的年龄差异。对于年轻人和老年人来说，左腹外侧 pFC（已在目标相关概念表征的受控检索中显示）对编码期间不断增加的干扰水平敏感，但对联想记忆准确性不敏感。与认知老化的神经回路补偿相关利用假设模型一致，腹内侧 pFC 参与监测内部生成的信息，比年轻人更多地被招募来支持目标-对象对的成功检索。较低水平的主动干扰。集体，