Journal
JOURNAL OF COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE
Volume 23, Issue 4, Pages 801-815Publisher
MIT PRESS
DOI: 10.1162/jocn.2010.21490
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Funding
- Canadian Institute of Health Research [CIHR] [MFE-87658, MT-12853, GR-14974]
- J. S. McDonnell foundation [220020082, 21002032]
- Heart and Stroke Foundation Centre for Stroke Recovery
- Posluns Centre for Stroke and Cognition
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This study used fMRI to investigate the neural effects of increasing cognitive demands in normal aging and their role for performance. Simple and complex go/no-go tasks were used with two versus eight colored letters as go stimuli, respectively. In both tasks, no-go stimuli could produce high conflict (same letter, different color) or low conflict (colored numbers) with go stimuli. Multivariate partial least square analysis of fMRI data showed that older adults overengaged a cohesive pattern of fronto-parietal regions with no-go stimuli under the specific combination of factors which progressively amplified task demands: high conflict no-go trials in the first phase of the complex task. This early neural over-recruitment was positively correlated with a lower error rate in the older group. Thus, the present data suggest that age-related extra-recruitment of neural resources can be beneficial for performance under taxing task conditions, such as when novel, weak, and complex rules have to be acquired.
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