Self-relevance effects are often confounded by the presence of emotional content, rendering it difficult to determine how brain networks functionally connected to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) are affected by the independent contributions of self-relevance and emotion.
This difficulty is complicated by age-related changes in functional connectivity between the vmPFC and other default mode network regions, and regions typically associated with externally oriented networks. We asked groups of younger and older adults to imagine placing emotional and neutral
objects in their home or a stranger's home. An age-invariant vmPFC cluster showed increased activation for self-relevant and emotional content processing. Functional connectivity analyses revealed age × self-relevance interactions in vmPFC connectivity with the anterior cingulate cortex.
There were also age × emotion interactions in vmPFC functional connectivity with the anterior insula, orbitofrontal gyrus, inferior frontal gyrus, and supramarginal gyrus. Interactions occurred in regions with the greatest differences between the age groups, as revealed by conjunction
analyses. Implications of the findings are discussed.
Age-related increase in GABAA receptor distribution in the prefrontal cortex
