Neural evidence of functional compensation for fluid intelligence in healthy ageing
Functional compensation is a common notion in the neuroscience of healthy ageing, whereby older adults are proposed to recruit additional brain activity to compensate for reduced cognitive function. However, whether this additional brain activity in older participants actually helps their cognitive...
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| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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eLife Sciences Publications Ltd
2025-01-01
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| Series: | eLife |
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| Online Access: | https://elifesciences.org/articles/93327 |
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| _version_ | 1841554238685052928 |
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| author | Ethan Knights Richard N Henson Alexa Morcom Daniel J Mitchell Kamen A Tsvetanov |
| author_facet | Ethan Knights Richard N Henson Alexa Morcom Daniel J Mitchell Kamen A Tsvetanov |
| author_sort | Ethan Knights |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Functional compensation is a common notion in the neuroscience of healthy ageing, whereby older adults are proposed to recruit additional brain activity to compensate for reduced cognitive function. However, whether this additional brain activity in older participants actually helps their cognitive performance remains debated. We examined brain activity and cognitive performance in a human lifespan sample (N = 223) while they performed a problem-solving task (based on Cattell’s test of fluid intelligence) during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Whole-brain univariate analysis revealed that activity in bilateral cuneal cortex for hard vs. easy problems increased both with age and with performance, even when adjusting for an estimate of age-related differences in cerebrovascular reactivity. Multivariate Bayesian decoding further demonstrated that age increased the likelihood that activation patterns in this cuneal region provided non-redundant information about the two task conditions, beyond that of the multiple demand network generally activated in this task. This constitutes some of the strongest evidence yet for functional compensation in healthy ageing, at least in this brain region during visual problem-solving. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-22dfb56c28ef4b6a82d2c61e3f985a7c |
| institution | Kabale University |
| issn | 2050-084X |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-01-01 |
| publisher | eLife Sciences Publications Ltd |
| record_format | Article |
| series | eLife |
| spelling | doaj-art-22dfb56c28ef4b6a82d2c61e3f985a7c2025-01-08T16:06:17ZengeLife Sciences Publications LtdeLife2050-084X2025-01-011310.7554/eLife.93327Neural evidence of functional compensation for fluid intelligence in healthy ageingEthan Knights0https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6078-9160Richard N Henson1Alexa Morcom2Daniel J Mitchell3https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8729-3886Kamen A Tsvetanov4https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3178-6363Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, United KingdomMedical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom; Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United KingdomSchool of Psychology, University of Sussex, Brighton, United KingdomMedical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, United KingdomDepartment of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom; Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United KingdomFunctional compensation is a common notion in the neuroscience of healthy ageing, whereby older adults are proposed to recruit additional brain activity to compensate for reduced cognitive function. However, whether this additional brain activity in older participants actually helps their cognitive performance remains debated. We examined brain activity and cognitive performance in a human lifespan sample (N = 223) while they performed a problem-solving task (based on Cattell’s test of fluid intelligence) during functional magnetic resonance imaging. Whole-brain univariate analysis revealed that activity in bilateral cuneal cortex for hard vs. easy problems increased both with age and with performance, even when adjusting for an estimate of age-related differences in cerebrovascular reactivity. Multivariate Bayesian decoding further demonstrated that age increased the likelihood that activation patterns in this cuneal region provided non-redundant information about the two task conditions, beyond that of the multiple demand network generally activated in this task. This constitutes some of the strongest evidence yet for functional compensation in healthy ageing, at least in this brain region during visual problem-solving.https://elifesciences.org/articles/93327fMRIresilienceageingcompensationfluid intelligencemultivariate |
| spellingShingle | Ethan Knights Richard N Henson Alexa Morcom Daniel J Mitchell Kamen A Tsvetanov Neural evidence of functional compensation for fluid intelligence in healthy ageing eLife fMRI resilience ageing compensation fluid intelligence multivariate |
| title | Neural evidence of functional compensation for fluid intelligence in healthy ageing |
| title_full | Neural evidence of functional compensation for fluid intelligence in healthy ageing |
| title_fullStr | Neural evidence of functional compensation for fluid intelligence in healthy ageing |
| title_full_unstemmed | Neural evidence of functional compensation for fluid intelligence in healthy ageing |
| title_short | Neural evidence of functional compensation for fluid intelligence in healthy ageing |
| title_sort | neural evidence of functional compensation for fluid intelligence in healthy ageing |
| topic | fMRI resilience ageing compensation fluid intelligence multivariate |
| url | https://elifesciences.org/articles/93327 |
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