Department of Education and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195 Berlin, Germany; Dahlem Institute for Neuroimaging of Emotion, Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195 Berlin, Germany; Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Freie Universität Berlin, Habelschwerdter Allee 45, 14195 Berlin, Germany.
Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, LPC, 3, place Victor Hugo, 13331 Marseille Cedex 1, France.
Neuroscience. 2018 Feb 10;371:75-95. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroscience.2017.11.042. Epub 2017 Dec 2.
Reading is not only one of the most appreciated leisure activities of the elderly but it clearly helps older people to maintain functional independence, which has a significant impact on life quality. Yet, very little is known about how aging affects the neural circuits of the processes that underlie skilled reading. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to systematically investigate the neural correlates of sublexical, orthographic, phonological and lexico-semantic processing in the aging brain. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we recorded brain activity of younger (N = 20; 22-35 years) and older (N = 38; 65-76 years) adults during letter identification, lexical decision, phonological decision and semantic categorization. Older and younger adults recruited an identical set of reading-related brain regions suggesting that the general architecture of the reading network is preserved across the lifespan. However, we also observed age-related differences in brain activity in the subcomponents of the reading network. Age-related differences were most prominent during phonological and orthographic processing possibly due to a failure of older adults to inhibit non-optimal reading strategies. Neural effects of aging were also observed outside reading-related circuits, especially in frontal midline regions. These regions might be involved because of their important role in memory, attention and executive control functions and their potential role in resting-state networks.
阅读不仅是老年人最喜爱的休闲活动之一，而且显然有助于老年人保持功能独立性，这对生活质量有重大影响。然而，人们对衰老如何影响支持熟练阅读的过程的神经回路知之甚少。因此，本研究的目的是系统地研究衰老大脑中亚词汇、正字法、语音和词汇语义加工的神经相关性。使用功能磁共振成像，我们记录了年轻（N=20；22-35 岁）和老年（N=38；65-76 岁）成年人在字母识别、词汇判断、语音判断和语义分类期间的大脑活动。年轻和老年成年人招募了一组相同的与阅读相关的大脑区域，这表明阅读网络的一般结构在整个生命周期中都得到了保留。然而，我们也观察到阅读网络的子组件的大脑活动存在与年龄相关的差异。与年龄相关的差异在语音和正字法处理期间最为明显，这可能是由于老年成年人无法抑制非最佳阅读策略所致。衰老的神经效应也在与阅读相关的回路之外观察到，尤其是在前中线区域。这些区域可能涉及，因为它们在记忆、注意力和执行控制功能中具有重要作用，并且在静息状态网络中可能具有潜在作用。
