1 Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, McGill University.
2 Department of Psychology, York University.
Perspect Psychol Sci. 2019 Jul;14(4):523-542. doi: 10.1177/1745691619827511. Epub 2019 Apr 23.
Cognitive aging is often described in the context of loss or decline. Emerging research suggests that the story is more complex, with older adults showing both losses and gains in cognitive ability. With increasing age, declines in controlled, or fluid, cognition occur in the context of gains in crystallized knowledge of oneself and the world. This inversion in cognitive capacities, from greater reliance on fluid abilities in young adulthood to increasingly crystallized or semanticized cognition in older adulthood, has profound implications for cognitive and real-world functioning in later life. The shift in cognitive architecture parallels changes in the functional network architecture of the brain. Observations of greater functional connectivity between lateral prefrontal brain regions, implicated in cognitive control, and the default network, implicated in memory and semantic processing, led us to propose the . In this review we provide evidence that these changes in the functional architecture of the brain serve as a neural mechanism underlying the shifting cognitive architecture from younger to older adulthood. We incorporate findings spanning cognitive aging and cognitive neuroscience to present an integrative model of cognitive and brain aging, describing its antecedents, determinants, and implications for real-world functioning.
认知老化通常被描述为一种损失或衰退的过程。新兴研究表明，情况更为复杂，老年人的认知能力既有损失也有提高。随着年龄的增长，在自我和世界知识的结晶方面取得进步的同时，控制或流畅认知的衰退也随之发生。这种认知能力的反转，从年轻成人更依赖流畅能力，到老年成人越来越依赖结晶或语义认知，对晚年的认知和现实世界功能有深远的影响。认知架构的转变与大脑功能网络架构的变化是平行的。观察到侧前额叶大脑区域之间的功能连接性增加，这些区域与认知控制有关，而默认网络则与记忆和语义处理有关，这促使我们提出了. 在这篇综述中，我们提供了证据表明，大脑功能架构的这些变化是从年轻到老年成人的认知架构转变的神经机制。我们整合了认知老化和认知神经科学的研究结果，提出了一个认知和大脑老化的综合模型，描述了其前因、决定因素及其对现实世界功能的影响。
