Huang Shenyang, Bogdan Paul C, Howard Cortney M, Gillette Kirsten, Deng Lifu, Welch Erin, McAllister Margaret L, Giovanello Kelly S, Davis Simon W, Cabeza Roberto
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Duke University, 417 Chapel Dr, Durham 27708 NC, United States.
Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute, Cleveland Clinic, 9500 Euclid Ave, Cleveland 44106, OH, United States.
Cereb Cortex. 2025 Aug 1;35(8). doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhaf211.
Although episodic memory is typically impaired in older adults (OAs) compared to young adults (YAs), this deficit is attenuated when OAs can leverage their rich semantic knowledge, such as their knowledge of schemas. Memory is better for items consistent with pre-existing schemas and this effect is larger in OAs. Neuroimaging studies have associated schema use with the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), angular gyrus (AG), and hippocampus (HPC), but most of this research has been limited to YAs. This fMRI study investigated the neural mechanisms underlying how schemas boost episodic memory in OAs. Participants encoded scene-object pairs with varying congruency, and memory for the objects was tested the following day. Congruency with schemas enhanced object memory for YAs and, more substantially, for OAs. fMRI analyses examined cortico-hippocampal interactions at encoding. We found that a vmPFC-HPC interaction was related to enhanced subsequent memory for congruent objects in both age groups, whereas an AG-HPC interaction contributed to subsequent memory for congruent objects only in OAs. Individual difference analyses of the AG-HPC interaction suggested that OAs made use of semantic knowledge to facilitate encoding. Collectively, our findings illustrate age-related differences in how schemas influence episodic memory encoding via distinct cortico-hippocampal interactions.
与年轻人（YAs）相比，老年人（OAs）的情景记忆通常会受损。然而，当老年人能够利用其丰富的语义知识（如对图式的了解）时，这种缺陷会得到缓解。与预先存在的图式一致的项目的记忆效果更好，且这种效应在老年人中更为明显。神经影像学研究已将图式的使用与腹内侧前额叶皮层（vmPFC）、角回（AG）和海马体（HPC）联系起来，但大多数此类研究仅限于年轻人。这项功能磁共振成像（fMRI）研究调查了图式如何增强老年人情景记忆的神经机制。参与者对具有不同一致性的场景 - 对象对进行编码，并在第二天测试对对象的记忆。与图式的一致性增强了年轻人对对象的记忆，更显著地增强了老年人对对象的记忆。fMRI分析在编码时检查了皮质 - 海马体的相互作用。我们发现，vmPFC - HPC相互作用与两个年龄组中对一致对象的后续记忆增强有关，而AG - HPC相互作用仅在老年人中对一致对象的后续记忆有贡献。对AG - HPC相互作用的个体差异分析表明，老年人利用语义知识来促进编码。总体而言，我们的研究结果说明了图式如何通过不同的皮质 - 海马体相互作用影响情景记忆编码的年龄相关差异。
