McGill University, Montréal, Quebéc, Canada.
Douglas Mental Health University Institute, Montréal, Quebéc, Canada.
J Cogn Neurosci. 2022 Jul 1;34(8):1500-1520. doi: 10.1162/jocn_a_01868.
Aging is associated with episodic memory decline and changes in functional brain connectivity. Understanding whether and how biological sex influences age- and memory performance-related functional connectivity has important theoretical implications for the cognitive neuroscience of memory and aging. Here, we scanned 161 healthy adults between 19 and 76 years of age in an event-related fMRI study of face-location spatial context memory. Adults were scanned while performing easy and difficult versions of the task at both encoding and retrieval. We used multivariate whole-brain partial least squares connectivity to test the hypothesis that there are sex differences in age- and episodic memory performance-related functional connectivity. We examined how individual differences in age and retrieval accuracy correlated with task-related connectivity. We then repeated this analysis after disaggregating the data by self-reported sex. We found that increased encoding and retrieval-related connectivity within the dorsal attention network (DAN), and between DAN and frontoparietal network and visual networks, were positively correlated to retrieval accuracy and negatively correlated with age in both sexes. We also observed sex differences in age- and performance-related functional connectivity: (a) Greater between-networks integration was apparent at both levels of task difficulty in women only, and (b) increased DAN-default mode network connectivity with age was observed in men and was correlated with poorer memory performance. Therefore, the neural correlates of age-related episodic memory decline differ in women and men and have important theoretical and clinical implications for the cognitive neuroscience of memory, aging, and dementia prevention.
衰老与情景记忆减退和大脑功能连接变化有关。了解生物性别是否以及如何影响与年龄和记忆表现相关的功能连接，对记忆和衰老的认知神经科学具有重要的理论意义。在这里，我们在一项与面孔-位置空间情境记忆相关的事件相关 fMRI 研究中扫描了 161 名年龄在 19 至 76 岁之间的健康成年人。在对任务进行编码和检索时，成年人会接受简单和困难版本的任务扫描。我们使用多元全脑偏最小二乘法连接来检验这样一个假设，即年龄和情景记忆表现相关的功能连接存在性别差异。我们研究了年龄和检索准确性的个体差异与任务相关连接之间的相关性。然后，我们在按自我报告的性别对数据进行分类后，重复了这一分析。我们发现，背侧注意网络（DAN）内以及 DAN 与额顶叶网络和视觉网络之间的编码和检索相关连接的增加与检索准确性呈正相关，与两性的年龄呈负相关。我们还观察到年龄和表现相关的功能连接存在性别差异：（a）仅在女性中，在任务难度的两个水平上都表现出更大的网络间整合；（b）在男性中观察到随着年龄的增长，DAN-默认模式网络的连接增加，并且与较差的记忆表现相关。因此，与年龄相关的情景记忆减退的神经相关性在女性和男性中存在差异，对记忆、衰老和痴呆预防的认知神经科学具有重要的理论和临床意义。
