General and Experimental Psychology, Department of Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany.
Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences (GSN), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2020 Mar 16;10(1):4823. doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-61844-z.
Phasic alerting cues temporarily increase the brain's arousal state. In younger and older participants, visual processing speed in a whole report task, estimated based on the theory of visual attention, is higher in cue than no-cue conditions. The present study assessed whether older participants' ability to profit from warning cues is related to intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC) in the cingulo-opercular and/or right fronto-parietal network. We acquired resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data from 31 older participants. By combining an independent component analysis and dual regression, we investigated iFC in both networks. A voxel-wise multiple regression in older participants yielded that higher phasic alerting effects on visual processing speed were significantly related to lower right fronto-parietal network iFC. This result supports a particular role of the right fronto-parietal network in maintaining phasic alerting capabilities in aging. We then compared healthy older participants to a previously reported sample of healthy younger participants to assess whether behaviour-iFC relationships are age group specific. The comparison revealed that the association between phasic alerting and cingulo-opercular network iFC is significantly lower in older than in younger adults.
阶段性警觉提示会暂时提高大脑的警觉状态。在年轻和年长的参与者中，基于视觉注意理论估计的整个报告任务中的视觉处理速度，在有提示和无提示条件下更高。本研究评估了年长参与者是否能够从警告提示中获益，这与扣带-顶叶和/或右侧额顶叶网络的固有功能连接（iFC）有关。我们从 31 名年长参与者中获得了静息状态功能磁共振成像数据。通过结合独立成分分析和双回归，我们研究了两个网络中的 iFC。对年长参与者的体素水平多元回归表明，视觉处理速度的阶段性警觉效应越高，与右侧额顶叶网络 iFC 越低呈显著相关。这一结果支持了右侧额顶叶网络在维持衰老过程中阶段性警觉能力方面的特殊作用。然后，我们将健康的年长参与者与之前报道的健康年轻参与者的样本进行了比较，以评估行为-iFC 关系是否具有年龄组特异性。比较表明，年长参与者中阶段性警觉与扣带-顶叶网络 iFC 之间的关联明显低于年轻参与者。
