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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Dec 25, 2025

A Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate Interference in Working Memory by Distractions and Interruptions

A Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate Interference in Working Memory by Distractions and Interruptions

Published on: July 16, 2015

Contingency awareness, aging, and the parietal lobe.

Dominic T Cheng¹, Alyssa M Katzenelson², Monica L Faulkner²

¹Department of Neurology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA; Department of Psychology, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, USA.

Neurobiology of Aging

|April 4, 2020

Summary

Older adults show reduced contingency awareness due to age-related changes in the parietal cortex. This brain region is crucial for awareness, and its disruption impairs this cognitive function, potentially linked to age-related neglect.

Keywords:

Classical conditioning Consciousness Memory fMRI tDCS

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Cognitive Psychology
Gerontology

Background:

Contingency awareness, the ability to perceive relationships between events, is vital for adaptive behavior.
This awareness is linked to the medial temporal lobe and declines with age.
Understanding age-related changes in contingency awareness is crucial for cognitive health.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the neural mechanisms of contingency awareness across different age groups.
To examine the role of the right parietal cortex in contingency awareness.
To assess the impact of transcranial direct current stimulation on awareness and conditioning in younger and older adults.

Main Methods:

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity.
Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to modulate parietal cortex activity.
Eyeblink classical conditioning to assess associative learning and awareness.

Main Results:

Older adults demonstrated significantly lower contingency awareness than younger adults.
Increased right parietal fMRI activation correlated with higher awareness in both age groups.
Inhibiting the right parietal lobe with cathodal tDCS reduced awareness in younger participants.
Older adults showed parietal and medial temporal lobe hyperactivations without conditioning deficits.

Conclusions:

The parietal cortex is a key neural substrate for contingency awareness.
Age-related decline in parietal cortex function impairs contingency awareness.
Impaired awareness in older adults may stem from age-related neglect-like processes affecting the parietal cortex.