Department of Neurology, School of Medicine and Health Sciences, University of Oldenburg, Heiligengeisthöfe 4, 26121 Oldenburg, Germany.
Department of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery, Harvard Medical School, Boston, 243 Charles Street, Boston, MA 02114, United States.
Cereb Cortex. 2023 Feb 20;33(5):2162-2173. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhac198.
Speech production relies on the interplay of different brain regions. Healthy aging leads to complex changes in speech processing and production. Here, we investigated how the whole-brain functional connectivity of healthy elderly individuals differs from that of young individuals. In total, 23 young (aged 24.6 ± 2.2 years) and 23 elderly (aged 64.1 ± 6.5 years) individuals performed a picture naming task during functional magnetic resonance imaging. We determined whole-brain functional connectivity matrices and used them to compute group averaged speech production networks. By including an emotionally neutral and an emotionally charged condition in the task, we characterized the speech production network during normal and emotionally challenged processing. Our data suggest that the speech production network of elderly healthy individuals is as efficient as that of young participants, but that it is more functionally segregated and more modularized. By determining key network regions, we showed that although complex network changes take place during healthy aging, the most important network regions remain stable. Furthermore, emotional distraction had a larger influence on the young group's network than on the elderly's. We demonstrated that, from the neural network perspective, elderly individuals have a higher capacity for emotion regulation based on their age-related network re-organization.
言语产生依赖于不同大脑区域的相互作用。健康的衰老会导致言语处理和产生的复杂变化。在这里，我们研究了健康老年人的全脑功能连接与年轻人有何不同。共有 23 名年轻（年龄 24.6±2.2 岁）和 23 名老年人（年龄 64.1±6.5 岁）在功能磁共振成像期间执行图片命名任务。我们确定了全脑功能连接矩阵，并使用它们计算了群体平均言语产生网络。通过在任务中包括一个中性和一个情绪激动的条件，我们描述了正常和情绪挑战处理过程中的言语产生网络。我们的数据表明，老年人健康个体的言语产生网络与年轻参与者一样有效，但它在功能上更加分离和模块化。通过确定关键网络区域，我们表明，尽管在健康衰老过程中会发生复杂的网络变化，但最重要的网络区域仍然保持稳定。此外，情绪干扰对年轻组的网络影响大于对老年组的影响。我们证明，从神经网络的角度来看，老年人具有基于其与年龄相关的网络重新组织的更高的情绪调节能力。
