Age-related changes in object processing and contextual binding revealed using fMR adaptation.

Using fMR adaptation, we studied the effects of aging on the neural processing of passively viewed naturalistic pictures composed of a prominent object against a background scene. Spatially distinct neural regions showing specific patterns of adaptation to objects, background scenes, and contextual integration (binding) were identified in young adults. Older adults did not show adaptation responses corresponding to binding in the medial-temporal areas.

Decreased neural specialization in old adults on a working memory task.

Compelling evidence shows that there is decreased neural specialization in the ventral visual cortex in older adults under passive viewing conditions. We assessed whether such specialization would be maintained on a working memory task and whether decreased specialization co-occurred with increased prefrontal activations. Participants encoded three faces or houses and maintained the set across an 8-s interval.

Cortical areas involved in object, background, and object-background processing revealed with functional magnetic resonance adaptation.

Previous work has suggested that object and place processing are neuroanatomically dissociated in ventral visual areas under conditions of passive viewing. It has also been shown that the hippocampus and parahippocampal gyrus mediate the integration of objects with background scenes in functional imaging studies, but only when encoding or retrieval processes have been directed toward the relevant stimuli. Using functional magnetic resonance adaptation, we demonstrated that object, background scene, and contextual integration of selectively repeated objects and background scenes could be dissociated during the passive viewing of naturalistic pictures involving object-scene pairings.