Age-related changes in repetition suppression of neural activity during emotional future simulation

NEUROBIOLOGY OF AGING

卷:94

Article

Devitt, Aleea L.^1,6  Thakral, Preston P.¹  Szpunar, Karl²  Addis, Donna Rose^3,4,5  Schacter, Daniel L.¹ 

[1] Harvard Univ, Dept Psychol, 33 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA

[2] Ryerson Univ, Dept Psychol, Toronto, ON, Canada

[3] Baycrest Hlth Sci, Rotman Res Inst, Toronto, ON, Canada

[4] Univ Toronto, Dept Psychol, Toronto, ON, Canada

[5] Univ Auckland, Sch Psychol, Auckland, New Zealand

[6] Univ Waikato, Private Bag 3105, Hamilton 3240, New Zealand

关键词: Episodic future thinking;    Emotion;    Aging;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2020.06.016

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

Despite advances in understanding the consequences of age-related episodic memory decline for future simulation, much remains unknown regarding changes in the neural underpinnings of future thinking with age. We used a repetition suppression paradigm to explore age-related changes in the neural correlates of emotional future simulation. Younger and older adults simulated positive, negative, and neutral future events either 2 or 5 times. Reductions in neural activity for events simulated 5 versus 2 times (i.e., repetition suppression) identify brain regions responsive to the specific emotion of simulated events. Critically, older adults showed greater repetition suppression than younger adults in the temporal pole for negative simulations, and the cuneus for positive simulations. These findings suggest that older adults distance themselves from negative future possibilities by thinking about them in a more semantic way, consistent with the view that older adults down-regulate negative affect and up-regulate positive affect. More broadly this study increases our understanding of the impact of aging on the neural underpinnings of episodic future simulation. (C) 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

【 授权许可】

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