Age-related differences in brain activity underlying identification of emotional expressions in faces

We used fMRI to explore brain activity in young and old adults, while they viewed and labeled faces expressing different emotions as well as neutral expressions. Older adults had significantly greater difficulty identifying expressions of sadness, anger and disgust than young adults. Both groups performed at ceiling for happy expressions. The functional neuroimaging data revealed that both young and old adults recruited a pattern of activity that distinguished happy expressions from all other expressions, but the patterns were age-specific. Older adults showed increased activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex, lingual gyrus and premotor cortex for happy expressions, whereas younger adults recruited a more widely distributed set of regions including the amgydala, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, lateral prefrontal regions and bilateral inferior parietal and superior temporal areas. Conversely, younger adults showed more activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate for other types of expressions, and older adults had more activity in dorsal cingulate, as well as middle and inferior frontal gyri, somatosensory cortex, insula and middle temporal regions. These results support previous research demonstrating age differences in brain activity during emotional processing, and suggest possible age-related differences in cognitive strategy during identification of happy faces, despite no effect of age on this ability.