Sasse Laura K, Peters Jan, Brassen Stefanie
Department of Systems Neuroscience, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf Hamburg, Germany.
Department of Systems Neuroscience, University Medical Center Hamburg-EppendorfHamburg, Germany; Department of Psychology, University of CologneCologne, Germany.
Front Aging Neurosci. 2017 Mar 14;9:58. doi: 10.3389/fnagi.2017.00058. eCollection 2017.
Enhancing prospective thinking by tagging the future with specific episodic events has been shown to reduce delay discounting in young age ("tag-effect"). So far, it is unclear whether such beneficial effect extends to old adulthood. Since the general ability of future thinking and cognitive control are crucial modulators of temporal discounting in young age, potential age-related decline in these functions might impact on the effect. We focused on this issue by combining functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with an established intertemporal choice task including episodic "tags" in healthy older participants. Future thinking ability was assessed using autobiographical interviews for future event simulations and a visual search task was applied to assess participants' cognitive control ability. In contrast to previous data in young adults, the group of older participants did not benefit from tagging the future with episodic events. Older participants' cognitive control function was directly associated with discounting rates in the episodic conditions: the less the older adults were able to focus their attention the less they benefited from the inclusion of episodic events. Consistent with this, imaging results revealed that: (a) subjective value (SV) signals in the hippocampus and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) as well as; (b) hippocampal-striatal coupling during the episodic condition were positively related to participants' control capacity. Our findings highlight the critical role of executive functioning for the simultaneous integration of episodic information with future value computation in aging. Boosting delay gratification by including episodic tags might hence be limited in older individuals with pronounced decline in distraction control.
通过用特定的情景事件标记未来来增强前瞻性思维已被证明可以减少年轻人的延迟折扣（“标记效应”）。到目前为止，尚不清楚这种有益效果是否也适用于老年人。由于未来思维和认知控制的一般能力是年轻人时间折扣的关键调节因素，这些功能中与年龄相关的潜在下降可能会影响这种效果。我们通过将功能磁共振成像（fMRI）与一项既定的跨期选择任务相结合来关注这个问题，该任务包括在健康的老年参与者中设置情景“标记”。使用自传式访谈来模拟未来事件以评估未来思维能力，并应用视觉搜索任务来评估参与者的认知控制能力。与之前关于年轻人的数据相反，老年参与者组并未从用情景事件标记未来中受益。老年参与者的认知控制功能与情景条件下的折扣率直接相关：老年人越难以集中注意力，他们从包含情景事件中受益就越少。与此一致的是，成像结果显示：（a）海马体和前扣带回皮质（ACC）中的主观价值（SV）信号，以及；（b）情景条件下海马体与纹状体的耦合与参与者的控制能力呈正相关。我们的研究结果强调了执行功能在衰老过程中情景信息与未来价值计算同时整合中的关键作用。因此，对于注意力控制能力明显下降的老年人来说，通过包含情景标记来提高延迟满足可能会受到限制。
