Laboratory for Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience, Centre for Biomedical Technology, Madrid University of Technology/Complutense University of Madrid, Campus de Montegancedo, Pozuelo de Alarcón, 28660, Madrid, Spain.
Biol Psychol. 2011 Sep;88(1):72-82. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2011.06.011. Epub 2011 Jul 7.
The present study uses magnetoencephalography (MEG) to examine brain magnetic patterns in young and older adults who perform an interference-based working memory (WM) task with two experimental conditions; interrupting and distracting. Behaviourally, both types of retroactive interference significantly impair WM accuracy at recognition more in older adults than in young adults with the latter exhibiting greater disruptions by interruptors. MEG results revealed the presence of differential age-related and interference-related neural patterns. Specifically, time-modulated activations in posterior-frontal regions were increased in young compared to older adults characterising each condition. Additionally, young adults exhibited greater posterior-frontal activations for the interrupting compared to the distracting condition. These results suggest that age-related deficits in inhibitory mechanisms that increase vulnerability to interference are associated with under-recruitments in posterior-frontal regions. On the other hand, the absence of differential interference-related neural recruitments reflects that both types of interference affect WM equally in the elderly.
本研究使用脑磁图（MEG）来检测在执行基于干扰的工作记忆（WM）任务时的年轻和年长成年人的大脑磁场模式，该任务有两种实验条件：中断和分散注意力。行为上，两种类型的回溯干扰都显著降低了年长成年人的 WM 准确性，而年轻成年人的干扰更大，后者受到干扰者的干扰更大。MEG 结果显示出与年龄相关的和与干扰相关的神经模式的差异。具体而言，与年长成年人相比，年轻成年人的后-额区域的时间调制激活增加，这是每个条件的特征。此外，年轻成年人在中断条件下表现出比分散注意力条件更大的后-额激活。这些结果表明，抑制机制的年龄相关性缺陷增加了对干扰的易感性，与后-额区域的招募不足有关。另一方面，缺乏与干扰相关的神经募集的差异反映出两种类型的干扰对老年人的 WM 影响相同。
