Department of Neurological Sciences, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE, USA; Center for Magnetoencephalography, UNMC, Omaha, NE, USA.
Department of Neurological Sciences, University of Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE, USA; Center for Magnetoencephalography, UNMC, Omaha, NE, USA.
Neuroimage. 2019 Jan 15;185:513-520. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.10.036. Epub 2018 Oct 13.
The ability to dynamically allocate neural resources within the visual space is supported by a number of spectrally-specific oscillatory responses, and such visuospatial processing has been found to decline moderately with age and differ by sex. However, the direct effects of age and sex on these oscillatory dynamics remains poorly understood. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), structural magnetic resonance imaging, and advanced source reconstruction and statistical methods, we investigated the impact of aging and sex on behavioral performance and the underlying neural dynamics during visuospatial processing. In a large sample spanning a broad age range, we find that a number of prototypical attention and perception network components, both spectrally- and spatially-defined, exhibit complex and uniquely informative relationships with age and sex. Specifically, neural responses in the theta range (4-10 Hz) were found to covary with chronological age in prefrontal and motor cortices, signifying a possible relationship between age and cognitive control. Further, we found that beta (18-24 Hz) activity covaried with age across a large swath of the somato-motor strip, supporting previous findings of motor planning and execution deficits with increasing age. Finally, gamma-frequency (48-70 Hz) oscillations were found to exhibit robust covariance with age in superior parietal and temporo-parietal areas, indicating that the mapping of saliency in visual space is modulated by the normal aging process. Interestingly, behavioral performance and some of these oscillatory neural responses also exhibited interactions between age and sex, indicating sex differences in the evolution of the neural coding of visual perception as age increases. In particular, men were found to have stronger correlations between age and neural oscillatory responses during task performance than women in lateral occipital and superior temporal regions in the alpha band and in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in the gamma band, while women exhibited more robust covariance between age and neural responses than men in inferior temporal and medial prefrontal cortex in the theta range.
在视觉空间内动态分配神经资源的能力得到了许多频谱特异性振荡反应的支持，并且已经发现这种视空间处理随着年龄的增长而适度下降，并且因性别而异。然而，年龄和性别对这些振荡动力学的直接影响仍知之甚少。使用脑磁图 (MEG)、结构磁共振成像以及先进的源重建和统计方法，我们研究了年龄和性别对行为表现以及在视空间处理过程中潜在神经动力学的影响。在一个跨越广泛年龄范围的大样本中，我们发现许多典型的注意和感知网络组件，无论是频谱定义还是空间定义，都与年龄和性别表现出复杂且具有独特信息的关系。具体来说，在额极和运动皮质中，发现θ范围（4-10 Hz）的神经反应与年龄呈复杂的正相关，表明年龄与认知控制之间可能存在关系。此外，我们发现β（18-24 Hz）活动在躯体运动带的很大一部分中与年龄呈正相关，支持了随着年龄增长运动计划和执行能力下降的先前发现。最后，发现γ频带（48-70 Hz）振荡与顶叶和颞顶区域的年龄表现出强大的正相关，表明在正常衰老过程中，视觉空间中显著映射的调制与年龄有关。有趣的是，行为表现和其中一些振荡神经反应也表现出年龄和性别的相互作用，表明随着年龄的增长，视觉感知的神经编码存在性别差异。特别是，在外侧枕叶和颞上区域的α频带以及背外侧前额叶皮层的γ频带中，男性在任务表现期间的年龄与神经振荡反应之间的相关性比女性更强，而女性在颞下和内侧前额叶皮层的θ频带中，年龄与神经反应之间的相关性比男性更强。
