Healthy aging is associated with changes in cognitive performance, including executive functions (EFs) and their associated brain activation patterns. However, it has remained unclear which EF-related brain regions are affected consistently, because the results of pertinent neuroimaging studies and earlier meta-analyses vary considerably. We, therefore, conducted new rigorous meta-analyses of published age differences in EF-related brain activity. Out of a larger set of regions associated with EFs, only the left inferior frontal junction and the left anterior cuneus/precuneus were found to show consistent age differences. To further characterize these two age-sensitive regions, we performed seed-based resting-state functional connectivity (RS-FC) analyses using fMRI data from a large adult sample with a wide age range. We also assessed associations of the two regions' whole-brain RS-FC patterns with age and EF performance. Although functional profiling and RS-FC analyses point toward a domain-general role of the left inferior frontal junction in EFs, the pattern of individual study contributions to the meta-analytic results suggests process-specific modulations by age. Our analyses further indicate that the left anterior cuneus/precuneus is recruited differently by older (compared with younger) adults during EF tasks, potentially reflecting inefficiencies in switching the attentional focus. Overall, our findings question earlier meta-analytic results and suggest a larger heterogeneity of age-related differences in brain activity associated with EFs. Hence, they encourage future research that pays greater attention to replicability, investigates age-related differences in deactivation, and focuses on more narrowly defined EF subprocesses, combining multiple behavioral assessments with multimodal imaging.

健康老龄化与认知能力的变化有关，包括执行功能 (EF) 及其相关的大脑激活模式。然而，仍不清楚哪些与 EF 相关的大脑区域始终受到影响，因为相关神经影像学研究和早期荟萃分析的结果差异很大。因此，我们对 EF 相关大脑活动中已发表的年龄差异进行了新的严格荟萃分析。在与 EF 相关的较大区域中，仅发现左下额叶交界处和左前楔/楔前叶显示出一致的年龄差异。为了进一步表征这两个年龄敏感区域，我们使用来自具有广泛年龄范围的大型成人样本的 fMRI 数据进行了基于种子的静息状态功能连接 (RS-FC) 分析。我们还评估了两个区域的全脑 RS-FC 模式与年龄和 EF 表现的关联。尽管功能分析和 RS-FC 分析指出左下额叶连接在 EFs 中的域一般作用，但个体研究对荟萃分析结果的贡献模式表明年龄特定过程的调节。我们的分析进一步表明，在 EF 任务期间，老年人（与年轻人相比）对左前楔/楔前叶的募集方式不同，这可能反映了转换注意力焦点的效率低下。总体而言，我们的研究结果质疑早期的荟萃分析结果，并表明与 EF 相关的大脑活动中与年龄相关的差异存在更大的异质性。因此，他们鼓励未来的研究更加关注可复制性，