Elsevier

Biological Psychiatry

Volume 70, Issue 2, 15 July 2011, Pages 115-122
Biological Psychiatry

Review
A Review of Functional Brain Imaging Correlates of Successful Cognitive Aging

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2010.12.032Get rights and content

Preserved cognitive performance is a key feature of successful aging. Several theoretical models have been proposed to explain the putative underlying relationship between brain function and performance. We aimed to review imaging studies of the association between brain functional response and cognitive performance among healthy younger and older adults to understand the neural correlates of successful cognitive aging. MEDLINE-indexed articles published between January 1989 and December 2009 and bibliographies of these articles and related reviews were searched. Studies that measured brain function with functional magnetic resonance imaging or positron emission tomography, evaluated cognitive performance, analyzed how cognitive performance related to brain response, and studied healthy older individuals were included. Eighty of 550 articles met these criteria. Seventy percent of the studies reported some brain regions in which greater activation related to better cognitive performance among older participants. This association was not universal, however, and was seen mainly in frontal cortex brain response and seemed to be more common among older compared with younger individuals. This review supports the notion of compensatory increases in brain activity in old age resulting in better cognitive performance, as suggested by hemispheric asymmetry reduction and posterior–anterior shift models of functional brain aging. However, a simple model of bigger structure → greater brain response → better cognitive performance might not be accurate. Suggestions for future research are discussed.

Section snippets

Methods and Materials

To retrieve studies for this review, we surveyed MEDLINE citations (January 1989–December 2009, human studies, in English) with the National Library of Medicine PubMed online search engine with the following search string: (“functional MRI” OR “fMRI” OR “functional magnetic resonance imaging” OR “PET” OR “positron emission tomography” OR “cerebral blood flow”) AND (brain OR cognition OR cognitive OR cerebral) AND (age[Title] OR aging[Title] OR aging[Title] OR old[Title] OR elderly[Title]) NOT

Characteristics of Reviewed Studies

Study characteristics and results for the 80 reviewed articles are presented chronologically in Table S1 in Supplement 1. There were two reports from the same longitudinal study (64, 80); two studies examined cognitive change longitudinally and brain response only once (54, 78); all other investigations were cross sectional. Among cross sectional studies, six (27, 41, 45, 47, 72, 73) included only older participants, one examined a large cohort ranging in age from 20 to 87 (21), and the rest (n

Discussion

In our review of studies addressing how brain function relates to cognitive performance among older individuals, we found frequent support for the notion that increased brain responsiveness is associated with better cognitive performance. Positive correlations between frontal cortex brain response and performance were more frequently reported than negative correlations, and positive associations were more often observed in frontal cortex than in other regions. Positive correlations also

References (106)

  • S.A. Langenecker et al.

    Frontal recruitment during response inhibition in older adults replicated with fMRI

    Neuroimage

    (2003)
  • N. Scarmeas et al.

    Cognitive reserve modulates functional brain responses during memory tasks: A PET study in healthy young and elderly subjects

    Neuroimage

    (2003)
  • C. Lustig et al.

    Preserved neural correlates of priming in old age and dementia

    Neuron

    (2004)
  • M.W. Vandenbroucke et al.

    Interindividual differences of medial temporal lobe activation during encoding in an elderly population studied by fMRI

    Neuroimage

    (2004)
  • C.L. Grady et al.

    Task-related activity in prefrontal cortex and its relation to recognition memory performance in young and old adults

    Neuropsychologia

    (2005)
  • C. Rosano et al.

    Functional neuroimaging indicators of successful executive control in the oldest old

    Neuroimage

    (2005)
  • B. Rypma et al.

    Dissociating age-related changes in cognitive strategy and neural efficiency using event-related fMRI

    Cortex

    (2005)
  • A. Tessitore et al.

    Functional changes in the activity of brain regions underlying emotion processing in the elderly

    Psychiatry Res

    (2005)
  • D.J. Tisserand et al.

    Age-related reorganization of encoding networks directly influences subsequent recognition memory

    Brain Res Cogn Brain Res

    (2005)
  • F.M. van der Veen et al.

    Effects of aging on recognition of intentionally and incidentally stored words: An fMRI study

    Neuropsychologia

    (2006)
  • F.A. Bernard et al.

    Neural correlates of age-related verbal episodic memory decline: A PET study with combined subtraction/correlation analysis

    Neurobiol Aging

    (2007)
  • S. Brassen et al.

    Structure-function interactions of correct retrieval in healthy elderly women

    Neurobiol Aging

    (2009)
  • A.H. Gutchess et al.

    Contextual interference in recognition memory with age

    Neuroimage

    (2007)
  • S.A. Langenecker et al.

    An evaluation of distinct volumetric and functional MRI contributions toward understanding age and task performance: A study in the basal ganglia

    Brain Res

    (2007)
  • D.J. Madden et al.

    Adult age differences in the functional neuroanatomy of visual attention: A combined fMRI and DTI study

    Neurobiol Aging

    (2007)
  • B. Rypma et al.

    Age-related differences in activation-performance relations in delayed-response tasks: A multiple component analysis

    Cortex

    (2007)
  • E. Zarahn et al.

    Age-related changes in brain activation during a delayed item recognition task

    Neurobiol Aging

    (2007)
  • L.L. Beason-Held et al.

    Longitudinal changes in aging brain function: I

    Neurobiol Aging

    (2008)
  • L. Emery et al.

    Age-related changes in neural activity during performance matched working memory manipulation

    Neuroimage

    (2008)
  • M.N. Rajah et al.

    Age-related differences in brain activity during verbal recency memory

    Brain Res

    (2008)
  • A.K. Solbakk et al.

    Altered prefrontal function with aging: Insights into age-associated performance decline

    Brain Res

    (2008)
  • G.D. Waiter et al.

    Is retaining the youthful functional anatomy underlying speed of information processing a signature of successful cognitive ageing?An event-related fMRI study of inspection time performance

    Neuroimage

    (2008)
  • C.E. Wierenga et al.

    Age-related changes in word retrieval: Role of bilateral frontal and subcortical networks

    Neurobiol Aging

    (2008)
  • D. Bergerbest et al.

    Age-associated reduction of asymmetry in prefrontal function and preservation of conceptual repetition priming

    Neuroimage

    (2009)
  • K. Bertsch et al.

    Resting cerebral blood flow, attention, and aging

    Brain Res

    (2009)
  • R. Holtzer et al.

    Age effects on load-dependent brain activations in working memory for novel material

    Brain Res

    (2009)
  • J. Kukolja et al.

    Ageing-related changes of neural activity associated with spatial contextual memory

    Neurobiol Aging

    (2009)
  • Z. Li et al.

    Asymmetric connectivity reduction and its relationship to “HAROLD” in aging brain

    Brain Res

    (2009)
  • A. Vallesi et al.

    Temporal preparation in aging: A functional MRI study

    Neuropsychologia

    (2009)
  • M.F. Folstein et al.

    “Mini-mental state”A practical method for grading the cognitive state of patients for the clinician

    J Psychiatr Res

    (1975)
  • M.M. Baltes et al.

    The daily life of elderly Germans: Activity patterns, personal control, and functional health

    J Gerontol

    (1990)
  • J.W. Rowe et al.

    Successful aging

    Gerontologist

    (1997)
  • T.A. Salthouse

    The processing-speed theory of adult age differences in cognition

    Psychol Rev

    (1996)
  • R.S. Wilson et al.

    Individual differences in rates of change in cognitive abilities of older persons

    Psychol Aging

    (2002)
  • N. Raz et al.

    Neuroanatomical correlates of cognitive aging: Evidence from structural magnetic resonance imaging

    Neuropsychology

    (1998)
  • F.M. Gunning-Dixon et al.

    Aging of cerebral white matter: A review of MRI findings

    Int J Geriatr Psychiatry

    (2009)
  • Kaup AR, Mirzakhanian H, Jeste DV, Eyler LT (in press): A review of the brain structure correlates of successful...
  • N.A. Dennis et al.

    Neuroimaging of healthy cognitive aging

  • R. Cabeza

    Hemispheric asymmetry reduction in older adults: The HAROLD model

    Psychol Aging

    (2002)
  • S.M. Landau et al.

    Associations between cognitive, functional, and FDG-PET measures of decline in AD and MCI

    Neurobiol Aging

    (2009)
  • Cited by (158)

    • Power shift and connectivity changes in healthy aging during resting-state EEG

      2022, NeuroImage
      Citation Excerpt :

      Several studies have provided support to the HAROLD and PASA models (Schneider-Garces et al., 2010; Cabeza and Dennis, 2012; Ansado et al., 2012; Li et al., 2015; Tagliabue et al., 2022). Nonetheless, a thorough understanding of the mechanisms underlying higher frontal activations in older adults is lacking (Eyler et al., 2011; Morcom and Johnson, 2015). In particular, it is not clear whether the increase in activity in anterior areas is due to increased activity within those areas or to a higher engagement of those areas in a network, i.e. an increased connectivity between regions.

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text