Abstract

Age-related reductions in neural selectivity have been linked to cognitive decline. We examined whether age differences in the strength of retrieval-related cortical reinstatement could be explained by analogous differences in neural selectivity at encoding, and whether reinstatement was associated with memory performance in an age-dependent or an age-independent manner. Young and older adults underwent fMRI as they encoded words paired with images of faces or scenes. During a subsequent scanned memory test participants judged whether test words were studied or unstudied and, for words judged studied, also made a source memory judgment about the associated image category. Using multi-voxel pattern similarity analyses, we identified robust evidence for reduced scene reinstatement in older relative to younger adults. This decline was however largely explained by age differences in neural differentiation at encoding; moreover, a similar relationship between neural selectivity at encoding and retrieval was evident in young participants. The results suggest that, regardless of age, the selectivity with which events are neurally processed at the time of encoding can determine the strength of retrieval-related cortical reinstatement.

中文翻译：

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检索相关恢复中的年龄差异反映了编码时与年龄相关的去分化。

摘要

与年龄相关的神经选择性降低与认知能力下降有关。我们检查了检索相关皮质恢复强度的年龄差异是否可以通过编码时神经选择性的类似差异来解释，以及恢复是否与年龄相关或年龄无关的记忆表现相关。年轻人和老年人在编码与面部或场景图像配对的单词时接受了 fMRI。在随后的扫描记忆测试中，参与者判断测试词是被研究过还是未被研究过，对于被判断为研究过的词，还对相关图像类别进行了源记忆判断。使用多体素模式相似性分析，我们确定了老年人相对于年轻人减少场景恢复的有力证据。然而，这种下降在很大程度上是由于编码时神经分化的年龄差异所致。此外，在年轻参与者中，编码和检索的神经选择性之间存在类似的关系。结果表明，无论年龄如何，在编码时神经处理事件的选择性可以决定与检索相关的皮层恢复的强度。