Event Abstract Back to Event White matter matters for grey(ing) areas: a functional and structural view of task switching dynamics in middle-to-old age Pauline Baniqued1*, Kathy Low1, Mark Fletcher1, Nils Schneider-Garces1, Chin Hong Tan1, Benjamin Zimmerman1, Gabriele Gratton1 and Monica Fabiani1 1 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, United States Control-demanding tasks often rely on communication among regions of the frontoparietal network, areas that undergo significant age-related decline. Here we integrate data from brain structure, event-related potentials (ERPs) and event-related optical signals (EROS) to better characterize preparatory control dynamics in middle to old age. Older adults (n=40) completed a task that required switching between processes that primarily recruit opposite prefrontal cortex hemispheres and thus involve the corpus callosum (CC; Gratton et al., JoCN, 2009). On each trial, they received a cue indicating whether to respond based on the meaning or position of an upcoming word, which was either "above" or "below" positioned above or below fixation. Participants were split into young-old (YO; 55-67 yrs) and old-old (OO; 68-85 yrs), and large- and small-CC groups. Larger anterior CCs significantly predicted smaller reaction time switch costs, but only in the YO group. Beginning around 250 ms, the ERPs showed switch x age and switch x CC interactions: switch trials resulted in greater negativity over F3 in the YO and large-CC groups, paralleling their smaller behavioral switch costs. This frontal negativity was accompanied by switch-related EROS activation in left middle frontal gyrus (MFG). Moreover, MFG-seeded lagged cross-correlations revealed task-dependent coupling: MFG activation predicted upregulation in left inferior frontal and parietal areas for the meaning task, and in right dorsal frontal and bilateral parietal regions for the position task. Overall, the large CC group also showed greater switch-related modulation in these task-specific frontal areas. Together these results suggest that a strong structural connection is critical to overcome the demands of shifting processing across hemispheres, and that difficulties engaging such control dynamics may lead to sub-optimal preparation strategies. Keywords: Aging, cognitive control, task switching, functional connectivity, fronto-parietal network Conference: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014. Presentation Type: Poster Topic: Cognition and Executive Processes Citation: Baniqued P, Low K, Fletcher M, Schneider-Garces N, Tan C, Zimmerman B, Gratton G and Fabiani M (2015). White matter matters for grey(ing) areas: a functional and structural view of task switching dynamics in middle-to-old age. Conference Abstract: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII). doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00098 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: 19 Feb 2015; Published Online: 24 Apr 2015. * Correspondence: Ms. Pauline Baniqued, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, Urbana, United States, baniqued@usc.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 Pauline Baniqued Kathy Low Mark Fletcher Nils Schneider-Garces Chin Hong Tan Benjamin Zimmerman Gabriele Gratton Monica Fabiani Google Pauline Baniqued Kathy Low Mark Fletcher Nils Schneider-Garces Chin Hong Tan Benjamin Zimmerman Gabriele Gratton Monica Fabiani Google Scholar Pauline Baniqued Kathy Low Mark Fletcher Nils Schneider-Garces Chin Hong Tan Benjamin Zimmerman Gabriele Gratton Monica Fabiani PubMed Pauline Baniqued Kathy Low Mark Fletcher Nils Schneider-Garces Chin Hong Tan Benjamin Zimmerman Gabriele Gratton Monica Fabiani 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.