Neural Specificity Predicts Fluid Processing Ability in Older Adults

We investigated whether individual differences in neural specificity-the distinctiveness of different neural representations-could explain individual differences in cognitive performance in older adults. Neural specificity was estimated based on how accurately multivariate pattern analysis identified neural activation patterns associated with specific experimental conditions. Neural specificity calculated from a same/different task on two categories of visual stimuli (faces and houses) significantly predicted performance on a range of fluid processing behavioral tasks (dot-comparison, digit-symbol, Trails-A, Trails-B, verbal-fluency) in older adults, whereas it did not correlate with a measure of crystallized knowledge (Shipley-vocabulary). In addition, the neural specificity measure accounted for 30% of the variance in a composite measure of fluid processing ability. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that loss of neural specificity, or dedifferentiation, contributes to reduced fluid processing ability in old age.