TY - JOUR
T1 - Age-related differences in brain activation during emotional face processing
AU - Gunning-Dixon, Faith M.
AU - Gur, Ruben C.
AU - Perkins, Alexis C.
AU - Schroeder, Lee
AU - Turner, Travis
AU - Turetsky, Bruce I.
AU - Chan, Robin M.
AU - Loughead, James W.
AU - Alsop, David C.
AU - Maldjian, Joseph A
AU - Gur, Raquel E.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank Norman Butler and the HUP MR technology staff for their invaluable help in data acquisition. We are grateful for the assistance of Jennifer Boyle and the staff of the Penn Passcard Program for Healthy Living of the Institute on Aging for their assistance in participant recruitment. Supported by grants MH60722, MH43880, MH19112, and the Bosworth Fund.
PY - 2003/3
Y1 - 2003/3
N2 - Advancing age is associated with significant declines on neurobehavioral tasks that demand substantial mental effort. Functional imaging studies of mental abilities indicate that older adults faced with cognitive challenges tend to activate more regions, particularly frontal, than their younger counterparts, and that this recruitment of additional regions may reflect an attempt to compensate for inefficiency in cortical networks. The neural basis of emotion processing in aging has received little attention, and the goal of the present study was to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the influence of age on facial emotion processing and activation in cortical and limbic regions. Participants (eight old and eight young adults) viewed facial displays of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and neutrality in alternating blocks of emotion and age discrimination. We predicted that in response to an emotion discrimination task, older adults would demonstrate increased use of frontal regions relative to younger adults, perhaps combined with diminished use of regions recruited by younger adults, such as temporo-limbic regions. During the emotion discrimination task, young participants activated, visual, frontal and limbic regions, whereas older participants activated parietal, temporal and frontal regions. A direct comparison between emotion and age discrimination revealed that while younger adults activated the amygdala and surrounding temporo-limbic regions, older adults activated left frontal regions. The results of this study suggest that older adults may rely on different cortical networks to perceive emotional facial expressions than do their younger counterparts.
AB - Advancing age is associated with significant declines on neurobehavioral tasks that demand substantial mental effort. Functional imaging studies of mental abilities indicate that older adults faced with cognitive challenges tend to activate more regions, particularly frontal, than their younger counterparts, and that this recruitment of additional regions may reflect an attempt to compensate for inefficiency in cortical networks. The neural basis of emotion processing in aging has received little attention, and the goal of the present study was to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the influence of age on facial emotion processing and activation in cortical and limbic regions. Participants (eight old and eight young adults) viewed facial displays of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and neutrality in alternating blocks of emotion and age discrimination. We predicted that in response to an emotion discrimination task, older adults would demonstrate increased use of frontal regions relative to younger adults, perhaps combined with diminished use of regions recruited by younger adults, such as temporo-limbic regions. During the emotion discrimination task, young participants activated, visual, frontal and limbic regions, whereas older participants activated parietal, temporal and frontal regions. A direct comparison between emotion and age discrimination revealed that while younger adults activated the amygdala and surrounding temporo-limbic regions, older adults activated left frontal regions. The results of this study suggest that older adults may rely on different cortical networks to perceive emotional facial expressions than do their younger counterparts.
KW - Aging
KW - Brain
KW - Facial emotion processing
KW - Functional neuroimaging
KW - fMRI
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U2 - 10.1016/S0197-4580(02)00099-4
DO - 10.1016/S0197-4580(02)00099-4
M3 - Article
C2 - 12498962
AN - SCOPUS:0037333632
SN - 0197-4580
VL - 24
SP - 285
EP - 295
JO - Neurobiology of Aging
JF - Neurobiology of Aging
IS - 2
ER -