Cogn Neuropsychol. 2000 Feb 1;17(1):165-86. doi: 10.1080/026432900380553.
In order to explore the neural correlates of age-related changes in visual perception of faces, positron emission tomographic scans were obtained on young and old adults while they were engaged in tasks of nondegraded and degraded face matching. Old adults were less accurate than were young adults across all face matching conditions, although the age difference was greatly reduced when degraded performance was adjusted for nondegraded performance. The interaction of age and degree of degradation on performance measures was not significant. Brain activity patterns during nondegraded face matching were similar in the two groups with some differences in parietal and prestriate cortices (greater activity in young adults) and in prefrontal cortex, thalamus, and hippocampus (greater activity in old adults). Increases in activity related to increasing degradation of the faces were seen mainly in prefrontal cortices in both age groups. Despite this similarity in the brain response to face degradation, there were striking differences between groups in the correlations between brain activity and degraded task performance. Different regions of extrastriate cortex were positively correlated with behavioural measures in the two groups (fusiform gyrus in the young adults and posterior occipital regions in old adults). In addition two areas where older adults showed greater activity during nondegraded face matching, thalamus and hippocampus, also showed positive correlations with behaviour during the degraded tasks in this group, but not in the young group. Thus, although the elderly are not more vulnerable to the effects of increasing face degradation, the brain systems involved in carrying out these visual discriminations in young and old adults are not the same. These results are consistent with the idea of functional plasticity in face processing over the life span.
为了探究与年龄相关的面孔视觉感知变化的神经关联，我们对年轻和年长成年人进行了正电子发射断层扫描，同时让他们参与非降级和降级面孔匹配任务。在所有面孔匹配条件下，年长成年人的准确性都低于年轻成年人，尽管当调整非降级表现时，年龄差异大大减小。年龄和退化程度对表现测量的交互作用不显著。在两组中，非降级面孔匹配期间的大脑活动模式相似，在顶叶和纹状体外皮质（年轻成年人的活动较大）以及前额叶皮质、丘脑和海马体（年长成年人的活动较大）中存在一些差异。与面孔退化程度增加相关的活动增加主要见于两组的前额叶皮质。尽管大脑对面孔退化的反应存在相似性，但两组之间大脑活动与退化任务表现之间的相关性存在显著差异。两组之间的额外皮质的不同区域与行为测量呈正相关（年轻成年人的梭状回和年长成年人的后枕叶区域）。此外，在非降级面孔匹配过程中，年长成年人表现出更大活动的两个区域——丘脑和海马体，在该组的降级任务中也与行为呈正相关，但在年轻组中则没有。因此，尽管老年人对外貌退化的影响不那么敏感，但参与年轻和年长成年人进行这些视觉辨别任务的大脑系统并不相同。这些结果与生命跨度中面部处理的功能可塑性的观点一致。
