Effects of healthy aging on human primary visual cortex

Aging often results in reduced visual acuity from changes in both the eye and neural circuits [1-4]. In normally aging subjects, primary visual cortex has been shown to have reduced responses to visual stimulation [5]. It is not known, however, to what extent aging affects visual field representations and population receptive sizes in human primary visual cortex. Here we use functional MRI (fMRI) and population receptive field (pRF) modeling [6] to measure angular and eccentric retinotopic representations and population receptive fields in primary visual cortex in healthy aging subjects ages 57 - 70 and in healthy young volunteers ages 24 - 36 (n = 9). Retinotopic stimuli consisted of black and white, drifting checkerboards comprising moving bars 11 deg in radius. Primary visual cortex (V1) was clearly identifiable along the calcarine sulcus in all hemispheres. There was a significant decrease in the surface area of V1 from 0 to 3 deg eccentricity in the aging subjects with respect to the young subjects (p = 0.039). The coherence of the fMRI% BOLD modulation was significantly decreased in the aging subjects compared to the young subjects in the more peripheral eccentricity band from 7 to 10 deg (p = 0.029). Finally, pRF sizes were significantly increased within the 0 to 3 deg foveal representation of V1 in the aging subjects compared to the young subjects (p = 0.019). Understanding the extent of changes that occur in primary visual cortex during normal aging is essential both for understanding the normal aging process and for comparisons of healthy, aging subjects with aging patients suffering from age-related visual and cortical disorders.