The Shifting Architecture of Cognition and Brain Function in Older Adulthood

Cognitive aging is often described in the context of loss or decline. Emerging research suggests that the story is more complex, with older adults showing both losses and gains in cognitive ability. With increasing age, declines in controlled, or fluid, cognition occur in the context of gains in crystallized knowledge of oneself and the world. This inversion in cognitive capacities, from greater reliance on fluid abilities in young adulthood to increasingly crystallized or semanticized cognition in older adulthood, has profound implications for cognitive and real-world functioning in later life. The shift in cognitive architecture parallels changes in the functional network architecture of the brain. Observations of greater functional connectivity between lateral prefrontal brain regions, implicated in cognitive control, and the default network, implicated in memory and semantic processing, led us to propose the default-executive coupling hypothesis of aging. In this review we provide evidence that these changes in the functional architecture of the brain serve as a neural mechanism underlying the shifting cognitive architecture from younger to older adulthood. We incorporate findings spanning cognitive aging and cognitive neuroscience to present an integrative model of cognitive and brain aging, describing its antecedents, determinants, and implications for real-world functioning.