Abstract

Degrading face stimuli reduces face discrimination in both young and older adults, but the brain correlates of this decline in performance are not fully understood. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the effects of degraded face stimuli on face and nonface brain networks and tested whether these changes would predict the linear declines seen in performance. We found decreased activity in the face network (FN) and a decrease in the similarity of functional connectivity (FC) in the FN across conditions as degradation increased but no effect of age. FC in whole-brain networks also changed with increasing degradation, including increasing FC between the visual network and cognitive control networks. Older adults showed reduced modulation of this whole-brain FC pattern. The strongest predictors of within-participant decline in accuracy were changes in whole-brain network FC and FC similarity of the FN. There was no influence of age on these brain-behavior relations. These results suggest that a systems-level approach beyond the FN is required to understand the brain correlates of performance decline when faces are obscured with noise. In addition, the association between brain and behavior changes was maintained into older age, despite the dampened FC response to face degradation seen in older adults.

中文翻译：

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面部网络内外的功能连接与减少对年轻人和老年人退化面部的歧视有关。

摘要

有辱人格的面部刺激减少了年轻人和老年人的面部歧视，但大脑对这种表现下降的相关性尚未完全了解。我们使用功能性磁共振成像来检查退化的面部刺激对面部和非面部大脑网络的影响，并测试这些变化是否会预测性能的线性下降。我们发现面部网络 (FN) 中的活动减少，并且 FN 中功能连接 (FC) 在不同条件下的相似性随着退化的增加而减少，但不受年龄的影响。全脑网络中的 FC 也随着退化的增加而变化，包括视觉网络和认知控制网络之间的 FC 增加。老年人表现出这种全脑 FC 模式的调制减少。参与者内部准确性下降的最强预测因素是全脑网络 FC 和 FN 的 FC 相似性的变化。年龄对这些大脑行为关系没有影响。这些结果表明，需要超越 FN 的系统级方法来理解当面部被噪声遮挡时性能下降的大脑相关性。此外，尽管老年人对面部退化的 FC 反应减弱，但大脑和行为变化之间的关联一直保持到老年。