Precuneus activity during retrieval is positively associated with amyloid burden in cognitively normal older carriers.

The precuneus is a site of early amyloid-beta (Aβ) accumulation. Previous cross-sectional studies reported increased precuneus fMRI activity in older adults with mild cognitive deficits or elevated Aβ. However, longitudinal studies in early Alzheimer's disease (AD) are lacking and the relationship to the Apolipoprotein-E () genotype is unclear.

Toward a functional future for the cognitive neuroscience of human aging.

The cognitive neuroscience of human aging seeks to identify neural mechanisms behind the commonalities and individual differences in age-related behavioral changes. This goal has been pursued predominantly through structural or "task-free" resting-state functional neuroimaging. The former has elucidated the material foundations of behavioral decline, and the latter has provided key insight into how functional brain networks change with age.

Early midlife ovarian removal is associated with lower posterior hippocampal function.

Introduction: Women with early bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy (BSO) have greater Alzheimer's disease (AD) risk than women with spontaneous menopause (SM), but the pathway toward this risk is understudied. Considering associative memory deficits may reflect early signs of AD, we studied how BSO affected brain activity underlying associative memory.

Methods: Early midlife women with BSO (with and without 17β-estradiol therapy [ET]) and age-matched controls (AMCs) with intact ovaries completed a face-name associative memory task during functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Gender Selectively Mediates the Association Between Sex and Memory in Cognitively Normal Older Adults.

Background And Objectives: Sex and gender are important topics of increasing interest in aging and dementia research. Few studies have jointly examined sex (as a biological attribute) and gender (as a sociocultural and behavioral characteristic) within a single study. We explored a novel data mining approach to include both sex and gender as potentially related influences in memory aging research.

Effects of early midlife ovarian removal on sleep: Polysomnography-measured cortical arousal, homeostatic drive, and spindle characteristics.

Bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy (BSO; removal of ovaries and fallopian tubes) prior to age 48 is associated with elevated risk for both Alzheimer's disease (AD) and sleep disorders such as insomnia and sleep apnea. In early midlife, individuals with BSO show reduced hippocampal volume, function, and hippocampal-dependent verbal episodic memory performance associated with changes in sleep. It is unknown whether BSO affects fine-grained sleep measurements (sleep microarchitecture) and how these changes might relate to hippocampal-dependent memory.

Sex Differences in the Association Between Vascular Risk Factors and Cognitive Decline: A UK Biobank Study.

Background: Age-related cognitive decline is accelerated by vascular risk factors for cerebral small vessel disease. However, the association of vascular risk factors with cerebral small vessel disease contributing to the sex differences in cognitive decline remains unclear.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to evaluate sex differences in cognitive decline and the association between vascular risk factors and cognitive decline by sex.

Language diversity across home and work contexts differentially impacts age- and menopause-related declines in cognitive control in healthy females.

Menopause is associated with declines in cognitive control. However, there is individual variability in the slope of this decline. Recent work suggests that indices of cognitive control are mediated by communicative demands of the language environment.

Structure-Function Interactions in the Hippocampus and Prefrontal Cortex Are Associated with Episodic Memory in Healthy Aging.

Aging comes with declines in episodic memory. Memory decline is accompanied by structural and functional alterations within key brain regions, including the hippocampus and lateral prefrontal cortex, as well as their affiliated default and frontoparietal control networks. Most studies have examined how structural or functional differences relate to memory independently.

Sex Differences in the Association of Age at Hypertension Diagnosis With Brain Structure.

Background: Sex differences exist in the likelihood of cognitive decline. The age at hypertension diagnosis is a unique contributor to brain structural changes associated with cerebral small vessel disease. However, whether this relationship differs between sexes remains unclear.

Sex differences in longitudinal changes of episodic memory-related brain activity and cognition in cognitively unimpaired older adults with a family history of Alzheimer's disease.

Episodic memory decline is an early symptom of Alzheimer's disease (AD) - a neurodegenerative disease that has a higher prevalence rate in older females compared to older males. However, little is known about why these sex differences in prevalence rate exist. In the current longitudinal task fMRI study, we explored whether there were sex differences in the patterns of memory decline and brain activity during object-location (spatial context) encoding and retrieval in a large sample of cognitively unimpaired older adults from the Pre-symptomatic Evaluation of Novel or Experimental Treatments for Alzheimer's Disease (PREVENT-AD) program who are at heightened risk of developing AD due to having a family history (+FH) of the disease.

Menopause Status and Within-Group Differences in Chronological Age Affect the Functional Neural Correlates of Spatial Context Memory in Middle-Aged Females.

Reductions in the ability to encode and retrieve past experiences in rich spatial contextual detail (episodic memory) are apparent by midlife-a time when most females experience spontaneous menopause. Yet, little is known about how menopause status affects episodic memory-related brain activity at encoding and retrieval in middle-aged premenopausal and postmenopausal females, and whether any observed group differences in brain activity and memory performance correlate with chronological age within group. We conducted an event-related task fMRI study of episodic memory for spatial context to address this knowledge gap.

Disturbed sleep is associated with reduced verbal episodic memory and entorhinal cortex volume in younger middle-aged women with risk-reducing early ovarian removal.

Introduction: Women with early ovarian removal (<48 years) have an elevated risk for both late-life Alzheimer's disease (AD) and insomnia, a modifiable risk factor. In early midlife, they also show reduced verbal episodic memory and hippocampal volume. Whether these reductions correlate with a sleep phenotype consistent with insomnia risk remains unexplored.

Women's Brain Health: Midlife Ovarian Removal Affects Associative Memory.

Women with early bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy (BSO; removal of ovaries and fallopian tubes) have greater Alzheimer's disease (AD) risk than women in spontaneous/natural menopause (SM), but early biomarkers of this risk are not well-characterized. Considering associative memory deficits may presage preclinical AD, we wondered if one of the earliest changes might be in associative memory and whether younger women with BSO had changes similar to those observed in SM. Women with BSO (with and without 17β-estradiol replacement therapy (ERT)), their age-matched premenopausal controls (AMC), and older women in SM completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging face-name associative memory task shown to predict early AD.

Scene memory and hippocampal volume in middle-aged women with early hormone loss.

The present study explored whether early midlife bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy (BSO), a female-specific risk factor for dementia, is associated with reduced medial temporal lobe structure and function. Younger middle-aged women with the BRCA1/2 mutation and a BSO prior to spontaneous menopause (SM) were recruited. We determined the performance of women with BSO not taking estradiol-based hormone therapy (n = 18) on a task measuring object and scene recognition and quantified medial temporal lobe subregion volumes using manually segmented high-resolution T2-weighted MRI scans.

Age- and Episodic Memory-related Differences in Task-based Functional Connectivity in Women and Men.

Aging is associated with episodic memory decline and changes in functional brain connectivity. Understanding whether and how biological sex influences age- and memory performance-related functional connectivity has important theoretical implications for the cognitive neuroscience of memory and aging. Here, we scanned 161 healthy adults between 19 and 76 years of age in an event-related fMRI study of face-location spatial context memory.

Volume of the posterior hippocampus mediates age-related differences in spatial context memory and is correlated with increased activity in lateral frontal, parietal and occipital regions in healthy aging.

Healthy aging is associated with episodic memory decline, particularly in the ability to encode and retrieve object-context associations (context memory). Neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies have highlighted the importance of the medial temporal lobes (MTL) in supporting episodic memory across the lifespan. However, given the functional heterogeneity of the MTL, volumetric declines in distinct regions may impact performance on specific episodic memory tasks, and affect the function of the large-scale neurocognitive networks supporting episodic memory encoding and retrieval.

The impact of the Siemens Tim Trio to Prisma upgrade and the addition of volumetric navigators on cortical thickness, structure volume, and H-MRS indices: An MRI reliability study with implications for longitudinal study designs.

Many magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measures are being studied longitudinally to explore topics such as biomarker detection and clinical staging. A pertinent concern to longitudinal work is MRI scanner upgrades. When upgrades occur during the course of a longitudinal MRI neuroimaging investigation, there may be an impact on the compatibility of pre- and post-upgrade measures.

Generalization of memory-related brain function in asymptomatic older women with a family history of late onset Alzheimer's Disease: Results from the PREVENT-AD Cohort.

Late-onset Alzheimer's disease (AD) disproportionately affects women compared to men. Episodic memory decline is one of the earliest and most pronounced deficits observed in AD. However, it remains unclear whether sex influences episodic memory-related brain function in cognitively intact older adults at risk of developing AD.

Sex differences in brain aging among adults with family history of Alzheimer's disease and APOE4 genetic risk.

Emerging evidence suggests that Alzheimer's Disease (AD) risk factors may differentially contribute to disease trajectory in women than men. Determining the effect of AD risk factors on brain aging in women, compared to men, is critical for understanding whether there are sex differences in the pathways towards AD in cognitively intact but at-risk adults. Brain Age Gap (BAG) is a concept used increasingly as a measure of brain health; BAG is defined as the difference between predicted age (based on structural MRI) and chronological age, with negative values reflecting preserved brain health with age.

Latent patterns of task-related functional connectivity in relation to regions of hyperactivation in individuals at risk of Alzheimer's disease.

The goal of this study was to assess how task-related hyperactivation relates to brain network dysfunction and memory performance in individuals at risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Eighty participants from the CIMA-Q cohort were included, of which 28 had subjective cognitive decline plus (SCD), as they had memory complaints and worries in addition to a smaller hippocampal volume and/or an APOE4 allele, 26 had amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and 26 were healthy controls without memory complaints. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) activation was measured during an object-location memory task.

Sex and gender differences in cognitive and brain reserve: Implications for Alzheimer's disease in women.

Women represent ⅔ of the cases of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Current research has focused on differential risks to explain higher rates of AD in women. However, factors that reduce risk for AD, like cognitive/brain reserve, are less well explored.

The association between cognitive reserve and performance-related brain activity during episodic encoding and retrieval across the adult lifespan.

Remembering associations between encoded items and their contextual setting is a feature of episodic memory. Although this ability generally deteriorates with age, there is substantial variability in how older individuals perform on episodic memory tasks. A current topic of debate in the cognitive neuroscience of aging literature revolves around whether this variability may stem from genetic and/or environmental factors related to reserve, allowing some individuals to compensate for age-related decline through differential recruitment of brain regions.

Publisher Correction: Maintenance, reserve and compensation: the cognitive neuroscience of healthy ageing.

In Figure 3b of the originally published article, the colours of the bars were incorrectly reversed. The bars shown in green should have been shown in blue to represent the findings from older adults, whereas the bars shown in blue should have been shown in green to represent the findings from young adults. This has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.