Under-recruitment and nonselective recruitment: dissociable neural mechanisms associated with aging

Frontal contributions to cognitive decline in aging were explored using functional MRI. Frontal regions active in younger adults during self-initiated (intentional) memory encoding were under-recruited in older adults. Older adults showed less activity in anterior-ventral regions associated with controlled use of semantic information. Under-recruitment was reversed by requiring semantic elaboration suggesting it stemmed from difficulty in spontaneous recruitment of available frontal resources. In addition, older adults recruited multiple frontal regions in a nonselective manner for both verbal and nonverbal materials. Lack of selectivity was not reversed during semantically directed encoding even when under-recruitment was diminished. These findings suggest two separate forms of age-associated change in frontal cortex: under-recruitment and nonselective recruitment. The former is reversible and potentially amenable to cognitive training; the latter may reflect a less malleable change associated with cognitive decline in advanced aging.