Colcombe Stan J, Kramer Arthur F, Erickson Kirk I, Scalf Paige
Beckman Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
Psychol Aging. 2005 Sep;20(3):363-75. doi: 10.1037/0882-7974.20.3.363.
The authors assessed individual differences in cortical recruitment, brain morphology, and inhibitory task performance. Similar to previous studies, older adults tended toward bilateral activity during task performance more than younger adults. However, better performing older adults showed less bilateral activity than poorer performers, contrary to the idea that additional activity is universally compensatory. A review of the results and of extant literature suggests that compensatory activity in prefrontal cortex may only be effective if the additional cortical processors brought to bear on the task can play a complementary role in task performance. Morphological analyses revealed that frontal white matter tracts differed as a function of performance in older adults, suggesting that hemispheric connectivity might impact both patterns of recruitment and cognitive performance.
作者评估了皮质募集、脑形态和抑制任务表现方面的个体差异。与之前的研究相似，在任务执行过程中，老年人比年轻人更倾向于双侧活动。然而，表现较好的老年人比表现较差的老年人双侧活动更少，这与额外活动具有普遍补偿作用的观点相反。对结果和现有文献的综述表明，只有当参与任务的额外皮质处理器能够在任务表现中发挥互补作用时，前额叶皮质的补偿活动才可能有效。形态学分析显示，老年人的额叶白质束因表现不同而有所差异，这表明半球连接性可能会影响募集模式和认知表现。
