Aging reduces neural specialization in ventral visual cortex

^*The Beckman Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801; and ^‡Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1109

Communicated by Edward E. Smith, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, July 15, 2004 (received for review December 1, 2003)

Abstract

The present study investigated whether neural structures become less functionally differentiated and specialized with age. We studied ventral visual cortex, an area of the brain that responds selectively to visual categories (faces, places, and words) in young adults, and that shows little atrophy with age. Functional MRI was used to estimate neural activity in this cortical area, while young and old adults viewed faces, houses, pseudowords, and chairs. The results demonstrated significantly less neural specialization for these stimulus categories in older adults across a range of analyses.

Footnotes

↵ † To whom correspondence should be addressed at: The Beckman Institute, 405 North Mathews, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801. E-mail: denisep{at}uiuc.edu.
Data deposition: The neuroimaging data have been deposited with the fMRI Data Center, www.fmridc.org (accession no. 2-2004-1167W).
Freely available online through the PNAS open access option.