False recognitions in short-term memory - Age-differences in neural activity

While the knowledge on age-related differences in susceptibility to episodic false memories is extensive, little is known about this phenomenon in visual short-term memory (STM). Our previous behavioural research indicated that older adults are more confident of their erroneous STM recognitions than young adults. However, unlike in episodic memory, we did not find support for older adults' higher rate of false alarms. To further understand this specific age-difference, here we investigated its neural correlates. First, the pattern of behavioural results replicated the one from our previous experiment. Second, younger adults, when compared to older adults, exhibited higher false recognition-related activity of the visual cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex, the frontal operculum/insular cortex as well as regions within the anterior and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. No age-differences were observed in hippocampal activity. Third, younger but not older adults presented higher activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and the frontal operculum/insular cortex for false recognitions when compared to highly confident correct rejections. Finally, frontal activity was influenced by both the individuals' performance and their metacognitive abilities. The results suggest that age-related differences in confidence of STM false recognitions may arise from age-differences in performance monitoring and uncertainty processing rather than in hippocampal-mediated binding.