Denburg N L, Tranel D, Bechara A
Department of Neurology, Division of Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, Iowa City, IA 52242-1053, USA.
Neuropsychologia. 2005;43(7):1099-106. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2004.09.012.
The prefrontal region of the brain, including the ventromedial sector which supports reasoning and decision-making, may undergo disproportionate aging in some older persons, but the empirical evidence is decidedly mixed. To help resolve this, we tested 80 neurologically and psychiatrically healthy Younger (aged 26-55) and Older (aged 56-85) adults on a "Gambling Task", which provides a close analog to real-world decision-making by factoring in reward, punishment, and unpredictability, yielding a sensitive index of ventromedial prefrontal function. A subset of the Older group manifested a decision-making impairment on the Gambling Task, in spite of otherwise intact cognitive functioning. This finding raises the possibility of disproportionate aging of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in these individuals. Our finding has important societal and public policy implications (e.g., choosing medical care, allocating personal wealth), and may also help explain why many older individuals are targeted by and susceptible to fraudulent advertising.
大脑的前额叶区域，包括支持推理和决策的腹内侧部分，在一些老年人中可能会出现不成比例的衰老，但实证证据却明显不一。为了帮助解决这一问题，我们对80名神经和精神健康的年轻人（26 - 55岁）和老年人（56 - 85岁）进行了一项“赌博任务”测试，该任务通过考虑奖励、惩罚和不可预测性，提供了一个与现实世界决策非常相似的情境，从而得出一个衡量腹内侧前额叶功能的敏感指标。尽管老年组的其他认知功能完好，但其中一部分人在赌博任务中表现出决策障碍。这一发现增加了这些个体腹内侧前额叶皮质出现不成比例衰老的可能性。我们的发现具有重要的社会和公共政策意义（例如，选择医疗保健、分配个人财富），也可能有助于解释为什么许多老年人成为欺诈性广告的目标且容易受到其影响。
