ABSTRACT

How prospective memory (PM) weakens with increasing age has been largely debated. We hypothesized that automatic and strategic PM processes, respectively mediated by focal and non-focal cues, are differently affected by aging, even starting from 50–60 years of age. We investigated this issue using a 2 × 2 design in which focal and non-focal experimental conditions were created by varying the conjoint nature of the ongoing task (lexical decision vs. syllable matching tasks) and the PM cue (words vs. syllables). In the whole-brain analysis we found that the left inferior frontal gyrus and the middle cingulate cortex were more activated when young compared to older individuals performed a PM task; moreover, the anterior cingulate cortex was selectively activated during non-focal PM when the cues were words. In a region-of-interest analysis we observed that the medial and the lateral portions of the rostral prefrontal cortex were associated with the focal and non-focal conditions respectively, more in young than in older adults. Our findings provide evidence in support of early age-related differences in automatic/strategic PM functioning.

摘要

人们对前瞻性记忆（PM）如何随着年龄增长而减弱的观点进行了广泛的争论。我们假设，分别由焦点和非焦点提示介导的自动和策略性PM过程受衰老的影响不同，甚至从50-60岁开始。我们使用2×2设计调查了此问题，其中通过改变正在进行的任务（词汇决策与音节匹配任务）和PM提示（单词与音节）的联合性质来创建焦点和非焦点实验条件。在全脑分析中，我们发现与年轻个体相比，年轻时左下额叶回和中扣带回皮层的激活程度更高；此外，当提示是单词时，在非局灶性PM期间选择性地激活了前扣带回皮层。在感兴趣区域分析中，我们观察到前额叶皮层的内侧和外侧部分分别与局灶性和非局灶性疾病相关，年轻人比老年人多。我们的发现为支持早期与年龄相关的自动/策略性PM功能差异提供了证据。