Top-down attention and Alzheimer's pathology affect cortical selectivity during learning, influencing episodic memory in older adults.
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 40512843.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1126/sciadv.ads4206 and PMC identifier 12164959.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Effective memory formation declines in human aging. Diminished neural selectivity-reduced differential responses to preferred versus nonpreferred stimuli-may contribute to memory decline, but its drivers remain unclear. We investigated the effects of top-down attention and preclinical Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology on neural selectivity in 166 cognitively unimpaired older participants using functional magnetic resonance imaging during a word-face/word-place associative memory task. During learning, neural selectivity in place- and, to a lesser extent, face-selective regions was greater for subsequently remembered than forgotten events; positively scaled with variability in dorsal attention network activity, within and across individuals; and negatively related to AD pathology, evidenced by elevated plasma phosphorylated Tau<sub>181</sub> (pTau<sub>181</sub>). Path analysis revealed that neural selectivity mediated the effects of age, attention, and pTau<sub>181</sub> on memory. These data reveal multiple pathways that contribute to memory differences among older adults-AD-independent reductions in top-down attention and AD-related pathology alter the precision of cortical representations of events during experience, with consequences for remembering.
Medical subject headings
- Alzheimer Disease
- Attention
- Memory, Episodic
- Learning
- Cerebral Cortex