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a Department of Neurology and Physiology, Keck Center of Integrative Neuroscience, University of California, San Francisco, California, USA b Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA
Key Words: aging • top-down modulation • fMRI • ERP • EEG • attention • working memory
Address for correspondence: Adam Gazzaley, M.D., Ph.D., University of California, 1700 4th Street, Room 102 C, San Francisco, CA 94143-2522. Voice: 415-476-2162; fax: 415-514-4451. adam.gazzaley{at}ucsf.edu
Normal aging is characterized by cognitive deficits that cross multiple domains and impair the ability of some older individuals to lead productive, high-quality lives. One of the primary goals of research in our laboratories is to study age-related alterations in neural mechanisms that underlie a wide range of cognitive processes so that we may generate a unifying principle of cognitive aging. Top-down modulation is the mechanism by which we enhance neural activity associated with relevant information and suppress activity for irrelevant information, thus establishing a foundation for both attention and memory processes. We use three converging technologies of human neurophysiology to study top-down modulation in aging: functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Using these tools we have discovered that healthy older adults exhibit a selective inability to effectively suppress neural activity associated with distracting information and that this top-down suppression deficit is correlated with their memory impairment. We are now further characterizing the basis of these age-related alterations in top-down modulation and investigating interventions to remedy them.
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