An fMRI study of age-associated changes in basic visual discrimination
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
An fMRI study of age-associated changes in basic visual discrimination Talia R. Seider 1,2
&
Eric C. Porges 2 & Adam J. Woods 2 & Ronald A. Cohen 2
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Clinical neuropsychology lacks tests of basic visuoperceptual and spatial skills that have well-controlled administration and sophisticated measurement methods. Items from the Visual Assessment Battery (VAB), a simultaneous match-to-sample task, assessed visual discrimination in 40 healthy adults aged 51–91 during fMRI. The tasks were designed to isolate discrimination of either location, shape, or velocity, and they each had three levels of difficulty. The Location task uniquely activated the dorsal visual processing stream, the Shape task the ventral stream, and the Velocity task an area encompassing V5. Greater age was associated with greater neural recruitment, particularly in frontal areas. Behaviorally, greater age was associated with prolonged response times, but not reduced accuracy. Increased difficulty was associated with slower responses and reduced accuracy, regardless of age. Results validated the specialization of brain regions for spatial, perceptual, and movement discriminations and the use of the VAB to assess functioning localized to these regions. Visual discrimination ability does not change dramatically with age, but like many cognitive processes, performance slows. Anterior neural recruitment during visual discrimination increases with age. Keywords Visual perception/discrimination . fMRI . Velocity . Location . Shape . Age
Introduction Aging is associated with a gradual decline in cognitive functions such as processing speed, episodic memory, and executive control, whereas semantic knowledge and visual functions remain relatively stable (Cattell 1987; Hedden and Gabrieli 2004). Additionally, volumes of certain brain regions (e.g., prefrontal cortex and hippocampus) significantly decrease while other regions, including primary sensory cortices, exhibit relatively less atrophy (Hedden and Gabrieli 2004; Sowell et al. 2003). Age-related changes in the visual Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11682-020-00301-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Talia R. Seider [email protected] 1
Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, Department of Psychiatry, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA
2
Center for Cognitive Aging and Memory Clinical Translational Research, McKnight Brain Institute, Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
processing system have consequently received far less attention in the field of clinical neuropsychology than other functions with more salient changes. Investigations regarding the functional neuroanatomy and neurophysiology of the visual system began with visual neuroscience research involving non-human primates. In a seminal study conducted by
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