Aging Does Not Affect Brain Patterns of Repetition Effects Associated with Perceptual Priming of Novel Objects

Soldan, Anja; Gazes, Yunglin; Hilton, H. John; Stern, Yaakov · 2008 · Crossref

DOI: 10.1162/jocn.2008.20130

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Summary

This study investigated whether aging affects the neural mechanisms underlying perceptual repetition priming, specifically examining if the spatial patterns of brain activity associated with processing repeated novel objects remain intact in older adults. While it is well-established that aging impairs explicit episodic memory, implicit memory tasks like perceptual priming often remain preserved. However, prior neuroimaging studies yielded mixed results regarding the neural correlates of this preservation, partly due to methodological limitations in testing whether brain activation patterns are truly identical across age groups. To address this, the authors employed multivariate linear modeling (MLM), a technique capable of rigorously testing the hypothesis that the spatial networks showing repetition-related neural plasticity are identical in young and elderly subjects, rather than merely similar in magnitude or location. The researchers conducted an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study with 14 healthy young adults (ages 19–29) and 13 healthy elderly adults (ages 67–81). Participants performed a perceptual priming task involving the classification of structurally "possible" and "impossible" three-dimensional line drawings. Each object was presented four times, allowing for the assessment of repetition effects. Following the scanning session, a subset of participants completed an explicit recognition memory test. The primary analysis focused on comparing the spatial patterns of blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) signal changes between the first and subsequent presentations of stimuli across the two age groups. Behavioral results indicated that while elderly subjects had lower overall accuracy and slower reaction times than young subjects, both groups demonstrated significant repetition priming, evidenced by faster reaction times for repeated objects. Explicit recognition memory was significantly impaired in the elderly group. Crucially, the MLM analysis revealed that the spatial networks of brain regions exhibiting repetition-related changes in activity were identical for both age groups. Specifically, both young and elderly participants showed repetition suppression (decreased activity) in visual and frontal regions and repetition facilitation (increased activity) in parts of the default network. Although there was a trend toward smaller magnitude effects in the elderly, the underlying spatial patterns did not differ. Furthermore, repetition-related reductions in the left inferior frontal cortex correlated with behavioral facilitation in both groups. These findings support the conclusion that perceptual repetition priming remains functionally intact in later adulthood because the same spatial networks of brain regions continue to exhibit repetition-related neural plasticity across the lifespan. The study demonstrates that the preservation of implicit memory in aging is not due to compensatory recruitment of different brain regions, as seen in some explicit memory tasks, but rather the continued operation of the same neural mechanisms observed in younger adults. This clarifies previous ambiguities in the literature by providing robust evidence that the neural architecture supporting perceptual priming is resistant to age-related decline.

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• age related perceptual decline