Abstract
Age-related deficits in selective attention have been demonstrated to
depend on the sensory modality through which targets and distractors are
presented. Some of these investigations suggest a specific impairment
of cross-modal auditory selective attention. For the first time, this
study is taking on a whole brain approach while including a passive
perception baseline, to investigate the neural underpinnings of
selective attention across age groups, and taking the sensory modality
of relevant and irrelevant (i.e., distracting) stimuli into account.
Sixteen younger (mean age = 23.3 years) and 14 older (mean age = 65.3
years), healthy participants performed a series of delayed
match-to-sample tasks, in which participants had to selectively attend
to visual stimuli, selectively attend to auditory stimuli, or passively
view and hear both types of stimuli, while undergoing 3T fMRI. The
imaging analyses showed that areas recruited by cross-modal visual and
auditory selective attention in both age groups included parts of the
dorsal attention and frontoparietal control networks (i.e.,
intraparietal sulcus, insula, fusiform gyrus, anterior cingulate, and
inferior frontal cortex). Most importantly, activation throughout the
brain did not differ across age groups, suggesting intact brain function
during cross-modal selective attention in older adults. Moreover,
stronger brain activation during cross-modal visual vs. cross-modal
auditory selective attention was found in both age groups, which is
consistent with earlier accounts of visual dominance. In conclusion,
these results do not support the hypothesized age-related deficit of
cross-modal auditory selective attention. Instead, they suggest that the
underlying neural correlates of cross-modal selective attention are
similar in younger and older adults.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 498978 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience |
Volume | 12 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 12 Nov 2020 |
Keywords
- selective attention
- sensory modality
- aging
- whole-brain fMRI
- top-down modulation
- TOP-DOWN MODULATION
- SUPPRESSION
- ENHANCEMENT