Age Differences of the Hierarchical Cognitive Control and the Frontal Rostro-Caudal Functional Brain Activation

Age-related differences in the functional hierarchical organization of the frontal lobe remain unclear. We adopted task-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate age differences in the functional hierarchical organization of the frontal lobe. Behavioral results report both reaction time and efficiency declined as the levels of abstraction increased in the selection of a set of stimulus-response mappings in older adults compared with young adults. fMRI findings suggest trends of the hierarchical organization along the rostro-caudal axis in both groups, and brain-behavior correlation further suggests neural dedifferentiation in older adults when performing at the highest level of control demands experiment. Behavioral performances and age difference overactivations at the highest level of control demands were both associated with working memory capacity, suggesting the working memory capacity is important for processing the highest task demands. Region-of-interest analysis revealed age differences in brain overactivation and common activation across experiments in the primary motor cortex, parietal lobule, and the fusiform gyrus may serve as shared mechanisms underlying tasks that are required for the selection of stimulus-response mapping sets. Overall, older adults reflect maladaptive overactivation in task-irrelevant regions that are detrimental to performance with the highest control demands.