Prakash Ruchika Shaurya, Erickson Kirk I, Colcombe Stanley J, Kim Jennifer S, Voss Michelle W, Kramer Arthur F
Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, USA.
Brain Cogn. 2009 Dec;71(3):328-35. doi: 10.1016/j.bandc.2009.07.005. Epub 2009 Aug 20.
We investigated the relative involvement of cortical regions supporting attentional control in older and younger adults during performance on a modified version of the Stroop task. Participants were exposed to two different types of incongruent trials. One of these, an incongruent-ineligible condition, produces conflict at the non-response level, while the second, an incongruent-eligible condition, produces conflict at both non-response and response levels of information processing. Greater attentional control is needed to perform the incongruent-eligible condition compared to other conditions. We examined the cortical recruitment associated with this task in an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging paradigm in 25 older and 25 younger adults. Our results indicated that while younger adults demonstrated an increase in the activation of cortical regions responsible for maintaining attentional control in response to increased levels of conflict, such sensitivity and flexibility of the cortical regions to increased attentional control demands was absent in older adults. These results suggest a limitation in older adults' capabilities for flexibly recruiting the attentional network in response to increasing attentional demands.
我们研究了在改良版斯特鲁普任务执行过程中，支持注意力控制的皮层区域在老年人和年轻人中的相对参与情况。参与者接触到两种不同类型的不一致试验。其中一种，即不一致-不可选条件，在非反应水平产生冲突，而另一种，即不一致-可选条件，在信息处理的非反应和反应水平都产生冲突。与其他条件相比，执行不一致-可选条件需要更强的注意力控制。我们在25名老年人和25名年轻人中采用事件相关功能磁共振成像范式，研究了与该任务相关的皮层激活情况。我们的结果表明，虽然年轻人在面对冲突水平增加时，负责维持注意力控制的皮层区域激活增加，但老年人的皮层区域对注意力控制需求增加缺乏这种敏感性和灵活性。这些结果表明，老年人在面对不断增加的注意力需求时，灵活调用注意力网络的能力存在局限性。
