White matter hyperintensities among older adults are associated with futile increase in frontal activation and functional connectivity during spatial search

The mechanisms by which aging and other processes can affect the structure and function of brain networks are important to understanding normal age-related cognitive decline. Advancing age is known to be associated with various disease processes, including clinically asymptomatic vascular and inflam...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2015-03, Vol.10 (3), p.e0122445-e0122445
Main Authors: Lockhart, Samuel N, Luck, Steven J, Geng, Joy, Beckett, Laurel, Disbrow, Elizabeth A, Carmichael, Owen, DeCarli, Charles
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Activation
Adult
Adults
Age
Age differences
Aged
Aged, 80 and over
Aging
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
Behavior
Biomarkers
Brain
Brain Mapping
Brain research
Cerebral hemispheres
Cluster Analysis
Cognition & reasoning
Cognitive ability
Cues
Dementia
Demography
Female
Frontal Lobe - physiology
Functional anatomy
Functional magnetic resonance imaging
Humans
Hypotheses
Indexing (Content analysis)
Inflammation
Magnetic resonance
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Nerve Net - physiology
Neural networks
Neuroimaging
Neurology
Neuropsychological Tests
Neurosciences
NMR
Nuclear magnetic resonance
Older people
Resonance
Searching
Spatial distribution
Structure-function relationships
Substantia alba
Task Performance and Analysis
Visual task performance
White Matter - physiology
Young Adult
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Summary:The mechanisms by which aging and other processes can affect the structure and function of brain networks are important to understanding normal age-related cognitive decline. Advancing age is known to be associated with various disease processes, including clinically asymptomatic vascular and inflammation processes that contribute to white matter structural alteration and potential injury. The effects of these processes on the function of distributed cognitive networks, however, are poorly understood. We hypothesized that the extent of magnetic resonance imaging white matter hyperintensities would be associated with visual attentional control in healthy aging, measured using a functional magnetic resonance imaging search task. We assessed cognitively healthy older adults with search tasks indexing processing speed and attentional control. Expanding upon previous research, older adults demonstrate activation across a frontal-parietal attentional control network. Further, greater white matter hyperintensity volume was associated with increased activation of a frontal network node independent of chronological age. Also consistent with previous research, greater white matter hyperintensity volume was associated with anatomically specific reductions in functional magnetic resonance imaging functional connectivity during search among attentional control regions. White matter hyperintensities may lead to subtle attentional network dysfunction, potentially through impaired frontal-parietal and frontal interhemispheric connectivity, suggesting that clinically silent white matter biomarkers of vascular and inflammatory injury can contribute to differences in search performance and brain function in aging, and likely contribute to advanced age-related impairments in cognitive control.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0122445