Nature Neuroscience 8, 1298 - 1300 (2005)
Published online: 11 September 2005; | doi:10.1038/nn1543
There is an Erratum (December 2005) associated with this Brief Communication.
Top-down suppression deficit underlies working memory impairment in normal agingAdam Gazzaley1, 2, Jeffrey W Cooney1, Jesse Rissman1
& Mark D'Esposito11
Henry H. Wheeler, Jr. Brain Imaging Center, Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute & Department of Psychology, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA. 2
Present address: University of California San Francisco, 1700 4th Street, Room 102C, San Francisco, California 94143-2512, USA.
Correspondence should be addressed to Adam Gazzaley adamgazz@comewander.com In this study, we assess the impact of normal aging on top-down modulation, a cognitive control mechanism that supports both attention and memory by the suppression and enhancement of sensory processing in accordance with task goals. Using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), we show that healthy older adults demonstrated a prominent deficit in the suppression of cortical activity associated with task-irrelevant representations, whereas enhancement of task-relevant activity was preserved. Moreover, this suppression-specific attention deficit correlated with impaired working memory performance.
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