Early prefrontal activation as a mechanism to prevent forgetting in the context of interference
Autor/es
García-Pacios, J; Gutiérrez, Ricardo; Solesio, Elena; Moratti, Stephan; Ruiz-Vargas, José María; [et al.]Fecha
2013-06-21Tipo de documento
articleÁrea/s de conocimiento
PsicologíaMateria/s Unesco
61 PsicologíaResumen
Objective: Recent research has focused on interference resolution deficits as the main
cause of short-term memory decreases in aging. To determine whether activation of
brain compensatory mechanisms occur during the encoding process in older people.
Moreover, two different levels of interference (distraction and interruption) were presented
during the maintenance period to examine how they modulate brain activity
profiles. Design: A delayed match-to-sample task with two experimental conditions:
distraction and interruption. Participants: Twenty-seven young adults from Complutense
University of Madrid and 20 healthy older adults from Complutense Elderly
University of Madrid. Measurements: Magnetoencephalography scans were recorded
during the execution of a working memory interference task. Brain activity sources
from younger and older adults during the encoding stage were compared in each
condition using minimum norm estimation analyses. Results: The elderly showed
enhancement of prefrontal activity during early latencies of the encoding process in both
conditions. In the distraction condition, enhanced activity was located in left ventrolateral
prefrontal regions, whereas in the interruption condition, enhanced activity was
observed in the right ventral prefrontal areas and anterior cingulate cortex.
Conclusion: Increased recruitment of prefrontal regions in the elderly might be related
to the processing depth of information, encoding of new information and semantic
associations that are successfully recalled, and with interference resolution and preparatory
control when the level of interference becomes higher. These prefrontal modulations
during early latencies might reflect a higher top-down control of the encoding
process in normal aging to prevent forgetting.