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White Matter Microstructure Predicts Focal and Broad Functional Brain Dedifferentiation in Normal Aging by Rieck, Jenny R.; Rodrigue, Karen M.; Park, Denise C.; Kennedy, Kristen M. is a Neuroscience article available to read on EtoBox.

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## Abstract Ventral visual cortex exhibits highly organized and selective patterns of functional activity associated with visual processing. However, this specialization decreases in normal aging, with functional responses to different visual stimuli becoming more similar with age, a phenomenon termed “dedifferentiation.” The current study tested the hypothesis that age-related degradation of the inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF), a white matter pathway involved in visual perception, could account for dedifferentiation of both localized and distributed brain activity in ventral visual cortex. Participants included 281 adults, ages 20–89 years, from the Dallas Lifespan Brain Study who underwent diffusion-weighted imaging to measure white matter diffusivity, as well as fMRI to measure functional selectivity to viewing photographs from different categories (e.g., faces, houses). In general, decreased ILF anisotropy significantly predicted both focal and broad functional dedifferentiation. Specifically, there was a localized effect of structure on function, such that decreased anisotropy in a smaller mid-fusiform region of ILF predicted less selective (i.e., more dedifferentiated)

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Author

Rieck, Jenny R.; Rodrigue, Karen M.; Park, Denise C.; Kennedy, Kristen M.

Publisher

MIT Press; MIT Press Journals; MIT Press - Journals (ISSN 0898-929X)

Published

2020

Language

EN

Field

Neuroscience (Life Sciences)