Functional MRI of Letter Cancellation Task Performance in Older Adults

Deng, Ivy D.; Chung, Luke; Talwar, Natasha; Tam, Fred; Churchill, Nathan W.; Schweizer, Tom A.; Graham, Simon J.

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2019.00097

Cited by 20 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 49 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The current findings support existing literature, which identifies age-related cognitive slowing and decline in many domains including memory, spatial ability, attention, processing speed, reasoning and global cognition, irrespective of health and education levels [54][55][56]. This is in accordance with previous studies, which have revealed both performance decrements and reduced levels of brain activity to be associated with increased age in a cognitively healthy older adult population [57,58]. Importantly, the results of this study clarify the neural basis underlying specific age-related changes in task performance, since the identified brain areas are implicated in cognitive functions vital for the TMT.…”

Section: Plos Onesupporting

confidence: 92%

Functional magnetic resonance imaging of the trail-making test in older adults

et al. 2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The trail-making test (TMT) is a popular neuropsychological test, which is used extensively to measure cognitive impairment associated with neurodegenerative disorders in older adults. Behavioural performance on the TMT has been investigated in older populations, but there is limited research on task-related brain activity in older adults. The current study administered a naturalistic version of the TMT to a healthy older-aged population in an MRI environment using a novel, MRI-compatible tablet. Functional MRI was conducted during task completion, allowing characterization of the brain activity associated with the TMT. Performance on the TMT was evaluated using number of errors and seconds per completion of each link. Results are reported for 36 cognitively healthy older adults between the ages of 52 and 85. Task-related activation was observed in extensive regions of the bilateral frontal, parietal, temporal and occipital lobes as well as key motor areas. Increased age was associated with reduced brain activity and worse task performance. Specifically, older age was correlated with decreased task-related activity in the bilateral occipital, temporal and parietal lobes. These results suggest that healthy older aging significantly affects brain function during the TMT, which consequently may result in performance decrements. The current study reveals the brain activation patterns underlying TMT performance in a healthy older aging population, which functions as an important, clinically-relevant control to compare to pathological aging in future investigations.

show abstract

Section: Plos Onesupporting

confidence: 92%

Functional magnetic resonance imaging of the trail-making test in older adults

et al. 2020

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The prototype 2 tablet system was also used to study the neural correlates of the LCT in the same group of healthy middle-aged-to-elderly participants that performed the TMT and CDT, as described above [ 51 ]. The standard pen-and-paper version of the LCT was also performed for comparison.…”

Section: Tablet Applicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Regarding the neural correlates, the contrast of LCT vs. control (visual fixation) revealed increased activity in areas associated with visuospatial attention, visuomotor control, visual search, and target detection [ 35 , 52 , 53 ]. The study also showed that older adults exhibited less LCT-related brain activity compared to younger adults, suggestive of neural changes underlying age-related reductions in performance [ 51 ].…”

Section: Tablet Applicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tablet Technology for Writing and Drawing during Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging: A Review

Lin

Tam

Churchill

et al. 2021

Sensors

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a powerful modality to study brain activity. To approximate naturalistic writing and drawing behaviours inside the scanner, many fMRI-compatible tablet technologies have been developed. The digitizing feature of the tablets also allows examination of behavioural kinematics with greater detail than using paper. With enhanced ecological validity, tablet devices have advanced the fields of neuropsychological tests, neurosurgery, and neurolinguistics. Specifically, tablet devices have been used to adopt many traditional paper-based writing and drawing neuropsychological tests for fMRI. In functional neurosurgery, tablet technologies have enabled intra-operative brain mapping during awake craniotomy in brain tumour patients, as well as quantitative tremor assessment for treatment outcome monitoring. Tablet devices also play an important role in identifying the neural correlates of writing in the healthy and diseased brain. The fMRI-compatible tablets provide an excellent platform to support naturalistic motor responses and examine detailed behavioural kinematics.

show abstract

“…Task-based fMRI studies have shown BOLD activation decreases with increasing age during tasks of visual attention [205,206], working memory [207,208] and memory encoding [209,210], as would be expected if such cognitive functioning decreases with age. However, neural activity-mediated BOLD changes with age also show significant heterogeneity.…”

Section: Agingmentioning

confidence: 76%

The Relationship Between Cognition and Cerebrovascular Reactivity: Implications for Task-Based fMRI

et al. 2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Elucidating the brain regions and networks associated with cognitive processes has been the mainstay of task-based fMRI, under the assumption that BOLD signals are uncompromised by vascular function. This is despite the plethora of research highlighting BOLD modulations due to vascular changes induced by disease, drugs, and aging. On the other hand, BOLD fMRI-based assessment of cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) is often used as an indicator of the brain's vascular health and has been shown to be strongly associated with cognitive function. This review paper considers the relationship between BOLD-based assessments of CVR, cognition and task-based fMRI. How the BOLD response reflects both CVR and neural activity, and how findings of altered CVR in disease and in normal physiology are associated with cognition and BOLD signal changes are discussed. These are pertinent considerations for fMRI applications aiming to understand the biological basis of cognition. Therefore, a discussion of how the acquisition of BOLD-based CVR can enhance our ability to map human brain function, with limitations and potential future directions, is presented.

show abstract

Functional MRI of Letter Cancellation Task Performance in Older Adults

Cited by 20 publications

References 49 publications

Functional magnetic resonance imaging of the trail-making test in older adults

Functional magnetic resonance imaging of the trail-making test in older adults

Tablet Technology for Writing and Drawing during Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging: A Review

The Relationship Between Cognition and Cerebrovascular Reactivity: Implications for Task-Based fMRI

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About