BOLD signal response in primary visual cortex to flickering checkerboard increases with stimulus temporal frequency in older adults

Uchiyama, Yuji; Sakai, Hiroyuki; Ando, Takafumi; Tachibana, Atsumichi; Sadato, Norihiro · 2021 · Crossref

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0259243

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Summary

This study investigates the relationship between the temporal frequency of visual stimuli and blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) signal responses in the primary visual cortex (V1) of older adults. The research was motivated by the well-documented difficulty older adults face in processing brief visual stimuli, a deficit that impacts daily activities such as driving and walking. While previous neuroimaging studies yielded inconsistent results regarding whether V1 activity increases or decreases with higher stimulus frequencies in older populations, this study aimed to resolve these discrepancies by employing surface-based fMRI analysis, which offers superior accuracy for localizing V1 activity compared to traditional voxel-based methods. The researchers conducted a block-design fMRI experiment with 29 healthy older adults (mean age 68 years). Participants viewed contrast-reversing checkerboard stimuli flickering at temporal frequencies of 2, 4, and 8 Hz. Visual processing speed was assessed using the Useful Field of View (UFOV) test. Data were analyzed using FreeSurfer software for surface-based reconstruction, allowing for precise definition of V1 regions based on cytoarchitectonic maps. The analysis included both categorical comparisons of BOLD activity at each frequency and parametric assessments of the slope of BOLD response relative to frequency increases. The results demonstrated that V1 BOLD activity significantly increased as the temporal frequency of the flickering stimulus increased from 2 to 8 Hz. Repeated-measures ANOVA revealed a significant main effect of frequency on MR signal changes within V1 regions of interest. Post-hoc tests confirmed that activity at 4 Hz and 8 Hz was significantly higher than at 2 Hz, though the difference between 4 Hz and 8 Hz was not statistically significant. Group-level analysis identified significant clusters with positive slopes, indicating increased activation with higher frequencies, and found no significant clusters with negative slopes. Individual analysis showed that 13 participants exhibited increased peak MR signals with frequency in both hemispheres. Furthermore, the study found no significant correlation between the slope of the BOLD response and UFOV performance, age, or Mini-Mental State Examination scores. These findings clarify that, contrary to some previous suggestions of decreased V1 response in older adults, the BOLD signal in V1 actually increases with higher temporal frequencies of flickering stimuli. This suggests that the neural response in V1 is not diminished by age in terms of frequency-dependent activation magnitude. The lack of correlation between V1 response slopes and visual processing speed implies that the difficulty older adults experience with brief stimuli may not be solely attributable to reduced V1 neural responsiveness to frequency changes, pointing to potential involvement of other neural pathways or processing stages.

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• age related perceptual decline