Idiosyncratic responding during movie-watching predicted by age differences in attentional control.


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Authors
Campbell, Karen L 
Shafto, Meredith A 
Wright, Paul 
Tsvetanov, Kamen A.  ORCID logo  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3178-6363
Geerligs, Linda 
Abstract

Much is known about how age affects the brain during tightly controlled, though largely contrived, experiments, but do these effects extrapolate to everyday life? Naturalistic stimuli, such as movies, closely mimic the real world and provide a window onto the brain's ability to respond in a timely and measured fashion to complex, everyday events. Young adults respond to these stimuli in a highly synchronized fashion, but it remains to be seen how age affects neural responsiveness during naturalistic viewing. To this end, we scanned a large (N = 218), population-based sample from the Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience (Cam-CAN) during movie-watching. Intersubject synchronization declined with age, such that older adults' response to the movie was more idiosyncratic. This decreased synchrony related to cognitive measures sensitive to attentional control. Our findings suggest that neural responsivity changes with age, which likely has important implications for real-world event comprehension and memory.

Description
Keywords
Aging, Attentional control, Independent components analysis, Intersubject correlation, Natural vision, fMRI, Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Aging, Attention, Brain, Cognition, Comprehension, Cortical Synchronization, Female, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Memory, Middle Aged, Motion Pictures, Principal Component Analysis, Young Adult
Journal Title
Neurobiol Aging
Conference Name
Journal ISSN
0197-4580
1558-1497
Volume Title
36
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Sponsorship
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/H008217/1)
Wellcome Trust (103838/Z/14/Z)
Medical Research Council (MC_U105597119)
MRC (unknown)
Medical Research Council (MC_U105579226)
This work and the Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience (Cam-CAN) are supported by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (grant number BB/H008217/1).