Effects of aging on recognition of intentionally and incidentally stored words: an fMRI study.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to gain more insight in the mechanism underlying a decline in recognition memory function with age. Twelve young (23-27 years) and 12 older (63-67 years) healthy men performed two types of word encoding tasks, in which words were either incidentally or intentionally encoded for storage in memory. After a 30min delay, participants performed a recognition task.

Age-related reorganization of encoding networks directly influences subsequent recognition memory.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to link performance-related brain activity during two word encoding tasks to subsequent recognition for those words in young and older adults. There were no significant group differences in performance during encoding, but the young subjects performed better than the older at the recognition task. Performance-related brain networks strongly differed between the two groups.

A voxel-based morphometric study to determine individual differences in gray matter density associated with age and cognitive change over time.

Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was used to examine the relation between age and gray matter density cross-sectionally and to study the association between gray matter density and longitudinal decline in performance on cognitive tests in healthy, non-demented elderly individuals. Participants were neuropsychologically tested at baseline and again after 3 years. Thirty-seven subjects (mean age 72.

On the involvement of prefrontal networks in cognitive ageing.

Normal ageing is associated with a wide variety of disturbances in the structure and function of the human brain. Recent neuroimaging studies suggest that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is particularly vulnerable to the effects of ageing. These findings are compatible with the so-called 'frontal ageing hypothesis' which has been formulated on the basis of neuropsychological research on non-pathological ageing.

Regional frontal cortical volumes decrease differentially in aging: an MRI study to compare volumetric approaches and voxel-based morphometry.

Recent neuroimaging studies suggest that the frontal lobes are the part of the brain most profoundly affected by the aging process. The present study investigated whether subregions within the frontal cortex show different patterns of brain aging. Magnetic resonance images of 57 healthy participants between 21 and 81 years old were used to measure regional frontal gray matter volumes in three ways: a manual tracing method, a semiautomatic "Talairach boxes" volumetric method, and voxel-based morphometry.