Effects of aging on neural connectivity underlying selective memory for emotional scenes

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Effects of aging on neural connectivity underlying selective memory for emotional scenes E. A. Kensinger1, 2 and J. D. Waring1* 1 Boston College, Department of Psychology, United States 2 Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, United States After viewing emotionally arousing visual scenes, participants often remember the emotional items within scenes but not the visual context in which they occurred—a tradeoff effect. We examined young and older adults’ encoding-stage effective connectivity predicting a trade-off in memory for high arousal scenes compared to remembering both the item and its background. In an event-related fMRI study, participants viewed scenes containing either high arousal or neutral items within neutral backgrounds. Outside the scanner, participants completed a memory test for items and backgrounds, presented independently and intermixed. We modeled the effective connectivity among regions responding to scene viewing (irrespective of emotional content or subsequent memory) and had theoretical relevance to emotion processing. Results for older adults revealed that the amygdala was in synergy with other limbic and prefrontal regions regardless of whether a trade-off occurred or both the emotional item and its background were remembered. In contrast, young adults showed synergy between amygdala and other regions only when both components would be remembered; the amygdala was out of sync with frontal and limbic regions when a trade-off would occur. These results suggest that the trade-off in young and older adults cannot be explained by the same underlying connectivity during encoding. Conference: The 20th Annual Rotman Research Institute Conference, The frontal lobes, Toronto, Canada, 22 Mar - 26 Mar, 2010. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Aging Citation: Kensinger EA and Waring JD (2010). Effects of aging on neural connectivity underlying selective memory for emotional scenes. Conference Abstract: The 20th Annual Rotman Research Institute Conference, The frontal lobes. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2010.14.00135 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 30 Jun 2010; Published Online: 30 Jun 2010. * Correspondence: J. D Waring, Boston College, Department of Psychology, Chestnut Hill, MA, United States, waringj@bc.edu Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers E. A Kensinger J. D Waring Google E. A Kensinger J. D Waring Google Scholar E. A Kensinger J. D Waring PubMed E. A Kensinger J. D Waring Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.