Increased Response-time Variability is Associated with Reduced Inferior Parietal Activation during Episodic Recognition in Aging

2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (5) ◽  
pp. 779-786 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart W. S. MacDonald ◽  
Lars Nyberg ◽  
Johan Sandblom ◽  
Håkan Fischer ◽  
Lars Bäckman

Intraindividual variability (IIV) in cognitive performance shares systematic associations with aging-related processes, brain injury, and neurodegenerative pathology. However, little research has examined the neural underpinnings of IIV, with no studies investigating brain correlates of IIV in relation to retrieval success. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examined links between IIV, recognition memory performance, and blood oxygenation level dependent activations. Nineteen older adults (70–79 years) were presented with 80 words at encoding, with brain scans and response latencies obtained during subsequent recognition. An index of IIV, the intraindividual standard deviation (ISD), was computed across successful latency trials. Decreasing ISDs were systematically associated with better recognition, faster latencies, and increased activation in the inferior parietal cortex (BA 40). Demonstrated links between less behavioral variability and parietal activations are consistent with the known importance of the parietal cortex for retrieval success. In support of extant findings and theory from neuroscience, neuropsychology, and cognitive aging, the present results suggest that behavioral IIV represents a proxy for neural integrity.

2006 ◽  
Vol 96 (6) ◽  
pp. 3517-3531 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin L. Vincent ◽  
Abraham Z. Snyder ◽  
Michael D. Fox ◽  
Benjamin J. Shannon ◽  
Jessica R. Andrews ◽  
...  

Despite traditional theories emphasizing parietal contributions to spatial attention and sensory-motor integration, functional MRI (fMRI) experiments in normal subjects suggest that specific regions within parietal cortex may also participate in episodic memory. Here we examined correlations in spontaneous blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) signal fluctuations in a resting state to identify the network associated with the hippocampal formation (HF) and determine whether parietal regions were elements of that network. In the absence of task, stimuli, or explicit mnemonic demands, robust correlations were observed between activity in the HF and several parietal regions (including precuneus, posterior cingulate, retrosplenial cortex, and bilateral inferior parietal lobule). These HF-correlated regions in parietal cortex were spatially distinct from those correlated with the motion-sensitive MT+ complex. Reanalysis of event-related fMRI studies of recognition memory showed that the regions spontaneously correlated with the HF (but not MT+) were also modulated during directed recollection. These regions showed greater activity to successfully recollected items as compared with other trial types. Together, these results associate specific regions of parietal cortex that are sensitive to successful recollection with the HF.


2012 ◽  
Vol 43 (8) ◽  
pp. 1661-1671 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Di Giorgio ◽  
B. Gelao ◽  
G. Caforio ◽  
R. Romano ◽  
I. Andriola ◽  
...  

BackgroundAbnormalities in hippocampal–parahippocampal (H-PH) function are prominent features of schizophrenia and have been associated with deficits in episodic memory. However, it remains unclear whether these abnormalities represent a phenotype related to genetic risk for schizophrenia or whether they are related to disease state.MethodWe investigated H-PH-mediated behavior and physiology, using blood oxygenation level-dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging (BOLD fMRI), during episodic memory in a sample of patients with schizophrenia, clinically unaffected siblings and healthy subjects.ResultsPatients with schizophrenia and unaffected siblings displayed abnormalities in episodic memory performance. During an fMRI memory encoding task, both patients and siblings demonstrated a similar pattern of reduced H-PH engagement compared with healthy subjects.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that the pathophysiological mechanism underlying the inability of patients with schizophrenia to properly engage the H-PH during episodic memory is related to genetic risk for the disorder. Therefore, H-PH dysfunction can be assumed as a schizophrenia susceptibility-related phenotype.


1997 ◽  
Vol 77 (3) ◽  
pp. 1630-1634 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory McCarthy ◽  
Marie Luby ◽  
John Gore ◽  
Patricia Goldman-Rakic

McCarthy, Gregory, Marie Luby, John Gore, and Patricia Goldman-Rakic. Infrequent events transiently activate human prefrontal and parietal cortex as measured by functional MRI. J. Neurophysiol. 77: 1630–1634, 1997. P300 is an event-related potential elicited by infrequent target events whose amplitude is dependent on the context provided by the immediately preceding sequence of stimuli, suggesting its dependence on working memory. We employed magnetic resonance imaging sequences sensitive to blood oxygenation level to identify regional changes evoked by infrequent visual target stimuli presented in a task typically used to elicit P300. Targets evoked transient event-related activation bilaterally in the middle frontal gyrus, in the inferior parietal lobe, and near the inferior aspect of the posterior cingulate gyrus beginning within 1.5 s of target onset and peaking between 4.5 and 6 s. These regions have been identified in previous neuroimaging studies in humans, and in single-unit recordings in monkeys, as components of a neural system mediating working memory, which suggests that this system may be activated by the same events that evoke P300.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adeline Jabès ◽  
Giuliana Klencklen ◽  
Paolo Ruggeri ◽  
Christoph M. Michel ◽  
Pamela Banta Lavenex ◽  
...  

AbstractAlterations of resting-state EEG microstates have been associated with various neurological disorders and behavioral states. Interestingly, age-related differences in EEG microstate organization have also been reported, and it has been suggested that resting-state EEG activity may predict cognitive capacities in healthy individuals across the lifespan. In this exploratory study, we performed a microstate analysis of resting-state brain activity and tested allocentric spatial working memory performance in healthy adult individuals: twenty 25–30-year-olds and twenty-five 64–75-year-olds. We found a lower spatial working memory performance in older adults, as well as age-related differences in the five EEG microstate maps A, B, C, C′ and D, but especially in microstate maps C and C′. These two maps have been linked to neuronal activity in the frontal and parietal brain regions which are associated with working memory and attention, cognitive functions that have been shown to be sensitive to aging. Older adults exhibited lower global explained variance and occurrence of maps C and C′. Moreover, although there was a higher probability to transition from any map towards maps C, C′ and D in young and older adults, this probability was lower in older adults. Finally, although age-related differences in resting-state EEG microstates paralleled differences in allocentric spatial working memory performance, we found no evidence that any individual or combination of resting-state EEG microstate parameter(s) could reliably predict individual spatial working memory performance. Whether the temporal dynamics of EEG microstates may be used to assess healthy cognitive aging from resting-state brain activity requires further investigation.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jelle A. van Dijk ◽  
Alessio Fracasso ◽  
Natalia Petridou ◽  
Serge O. Dumoulin

AbstractAdvancements in ultra-high field (7 T and higher) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners have made it possible to investigate both the structure and function of the human brain at a sub-millimeter scale. As neuronal feedforward and feedback information arrives in different layers, sub-millimeter functional MRI has the potential to uncover information processing between cortical micro-circuits across cortical depth, i.e. laminar fMRI. For nearly all conventional fMRI analyses, the main assumption is that the relationship between local neuronal activity and the blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) signal adheres to the principles of linear systems theory. For laminar fMRI, however, directional blood pooling across cortical depth stemming from the anatomy of the cortical vasculature, potentially violates these linear system assumptions, thereby complicating analysis and interpretation. Here we assess whether the temporal additivity requirement of linear systems theory holds for laminar fMRI. We measured responses elicited by viewing stimuli presented for different durations and evaluated how well the responses to shorter durations predicted those elicited by longer durations. We find that BOLD response predictions are consistently good predictors for observed responses, across all cortical depths, and in all measured visual field maps (V1, V2, and V3). Our results suggest that the temporal additivity assumption for linear systems theory holds for laminar fMRI. We thus show that the temporal additivity assumption holds across cortical depth for sub-millimeter gradient-echo BOLD fMRI in early visual cortex.


2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (S1) ◽  
pp. 1-1
Author(s):  
M. Casacchia ◽  
M. Mazza ◽  
A. Catalucci ◽  
R. Pollice ◽  
M. Gallucci ◽  
...  

Aims:Affective deficits (flat affect, a diminished expression of emotion, anhedonia, and lowered ability to experience pleasure) are very common in schizophrenia. In emotion feeling, the crucial role of the insula, rather than of the primary somatosensory cortices, strongly suggests that the neural substrate for emotions is not merely sensorial. It is more likely that the activation of the insula representation of the viscero-motor activity is responsible for feeling of disgust. A recent MRI study demonstrated specific left anterior insular volume reduction in chronic schizophrenia patients: sustainable is the suggestion that emotion of disgust or of taste may be related to the experience of pleasure, which probably is compromise in schizophrenics.We investigated fMRI brain activations in first episode schizophrenic subjects with negative symptoms and in healthy subjects elicited by pleasant and unpleasant visual stimuli.Method:Ten first-episode schizophrenic subjects with normal IQ were recruited from the psychiatric service “SMILE” of San Salvatore Hospital and 10 healthy volunteers matched for age and education were scanned during observation of pleasant and unpleasant visual stimuli. Functional images were acquired with a 1.5T MRI scanner. Blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) contrast was obtained using EPI T2* weighted images.Results:The most important result of the study was the demonstration that anterior insula was activated by the exposure to disgusting stimula in normal subjects but not in schizophrenic subjects.Conclusion:This failure of the neural systems used to support emotional attribution is consistent with pervasive problems in experiencing emotions by schizophrenics.


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