Marginal neurofunctional changes in high-performing older adults in a verbal fluency task

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Aging Research

Background:

• High cognitive performance in aging is linked to altered brain activity.
• Lexical speech production and verbal fluency tasks are less studied regarding age-related brain changes.
• Neurofunctional reorganization is not consistently observed in verbal fluency tasks for older adults.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate brain activation patterns during semantic and orthographic verbal fluency tasks in healthy younger and older adults.
• To determine if age affects cerebral activation during lexical speech production.
• To explore the relationship between performance levels and neurofunctional changes in aging.

Main Methods:

• Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was employed.
• A mixed block/event-related fMRI design was used.
• Healthy younger and older adults performed overt, self-paced semantic and orthographic verbal fluency tasks.

Main Results:

• Behavioral performance was comparable across age groups and tasks.
• Whole brain analysis showed task-related differences in brain activity, but no significant age effect or interaction.
• Only localized brain activity differences were detected between younger and older adults.

Conclusions:

• High-performing older adults exhibit preserved lexical speech production abilities with minimal age-related neurofunctional changes.
• Observed marginal differences in brain activity may be related to specific task demands rather than global aging effects.
• The findings suggest that significant neurofunctional reorganization is not a prerequisite for maintaining high performance in verbal fluency tasks in aging.