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1. Differences in the functional brain architecture of sustained attention and working memory in youth and adults

   https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001938  

   Kardan, Omid; Stier, Andrew J.; Cardenas-Iniguez, Carlos; Schertz, Kathryn E.; Pruin, Julia C.; Deng, Yuting; Chamberlain, Taylor; Meredith, Wesley J.; Zhang, Xihan; Bowman, Jillian E.; et al (December 2022, PLOS Biology)

   Cohen Kadosh, Roi (Ed.)

   Sustained attention (SA) and working memory (WM) are critical processes, but the brain networks supporting these abilities in development are unknown. We characterized the functional brain architecture of SA and WM in 9- to 11-year-old children and adults. First, we found that adult network predictors of SA generalized to predict individual differences and fluctuations in SA in youth. A WM model predicted WM performance both across and within children—and captured individual differences in later recognition memory—but underperformed in youth relative to adults. We next characterized functional connections differentially related to SA and WM in youth compared to adults. Results revealed 2 network configurations: a dominant architecture predicting performance in both age groups and a secondary architecture, more prominent for WM than SA, predicting performance in each age group differently. Thus, functional connectivity (FC) predicts SA and WM in youth, with networks predicting WM performance differing more between youths and adults than those predicting SA. 

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2. Differences in the functional brain architecture of sustained attention and working memory in youth and adults

   https://doi.org/10.15154/1528288  

   Kardan, O. (January 2023, PLoS Biology)

   Sustained attention (SA) and working memory (WM) are critical processes, but the brain networks supporting these abilities in development are unknown. We characterized the functional brain architecture of SA and WM in 9–11-year-old children and adults. First, we found that adult network predictors of SA generalized to predict individual differences and fluctuations in SA in youth. A WM model predicted WM performance both across and within children—and captured individual differences in later recognition memory—but underperformed in youth relative to adults. We next characterized functional connections differentially related to SA and WM in youth compared to adults. Results revealed two network configurations: a dominant architecture predicting performance in both age groups and a secondary architecture, more prominent for WM than SA, predicting performance in each age group differently. Thus, functional connectivity predicts SA and WM in youth, with networks predicting WM performance differing more between youths and adults than those predicting SA. 

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3. Age Differences In Retrieval-Related Reinstatement Reflect Age-Related Dedifferentiation At Encoding

   https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhaa210  

   Hill, Paul F; King, Danielle R; Rugg, Michael D (August 2020, Cerebral Cortex)

   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. 

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4. Correcting fake news headlines after repeated exposure: memory and belief accuracy in younger and older adults

   https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-024-00585-3  

   Kemp, Paige_L; Loaiza, Vanessa_M; Kelley, Colleen_M; Wahlheim, Christopher_N (August 2024, Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications)

   Abstract The efficacy of fake news corrections in improving memory and belief accuracy may depend on how often adults see false information before it is corrected. Two experiments tested the competing predictions that repeating fake news before corrections will either impair or improve memory and belief accuracy. These experiments also examined whether fake news exposure effects would differ for younger and older adults due to age-related differences in the recollection of contextual details. Younger and older adults read real and fake news headlines that appeared once or thrice. Next, they identified fake news corrections among real news headlines. Later, recognition and cued recall tests assessed memory for real news, fake news, if corrections occurred, and beliefs in retrieved details. Repeating fake news increased detection and remembering of corrections, correct real news retrieval, and erroneous fake news retrieval. No age differences emerged for detection of corrections, but younger adults remembered corrections better than older adults. At test, correct fake news retrieval for earlier-detected corrections was associated with better real news retrieval. This benefit did not differ between age groups in recognition but was greater for younger than older adults in cued recall. When detected corrections were not remembered at test, repeated fake news increased memory errors. Overall, both age groups believed correctly retrieved real news more than erroneously retrieved fake news to a similar degree. These findings suggest that fake news repetition effects on subsequent memory accuracy depended on age differences in recollection-based retrieval of fake news and that it was corrected. 

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5. Age-related differences in prefrontal glutamate are associated with increased working memory decay that gives the appearance of learning deficits

   https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.85243  

   Rmus, Milena; He, Mingjian; Baribault, Beth; Walsh, Edward G; Festa, Elena K; Collins, Anne GE; Nassar, Matthew R (April 2023, eLife)

   The ability to use past experience to effectively guide decision-making declines in older adulthood. Such declines have been theorized to emerge from either impairments of striatal reinforcement learning systems (RL) or impairments of recurrent networks in prefrontal and parietal cortex that support working memory (WM). Distinguishing between these hypotheses has been challenging because either RL or WM could be used to facilitate successful decision-making in typical laboratory tasks. Here we investigated the neurocomputational correlates of age-related decision-making deficits using an RL-WM task to disentangle these mechanisms, a computational model to quantify them, and magnetic resonance spectroscopy to link them to their molecular bases. Our results reveal that task performance is worse in older age, in a manner best explained by working memory deficits, as might be expected if cortical recurrent networks were unable to sustain persistent activity across multiple trials. Consistent with this, we show that older adults had lower levels of prefrontal glutamate, the excitatory neurotransmitter thought to support persistent activity, compared to younger adults. Individuals with the lowest prefrontal glutamate levels displayed the greatest impairments in working memory after controlling for other anatomical and metabolic factors. Together, our results suggest that lower levels of prefrontal glutamate may contribute to failures of working memory systems and impaired decision-making in older adulthood. 

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