Abstract

The cognitive decline associated with healthy aging begins in early adulthood and is important to understand as a precursor of and relative to mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer disease. Anatomical atrophy, functional compensation, and network reorganization have been observed in populations of older adults. In the current study, we examine functional network correlates of memory performance on the Wechsler Memory Scale IV and the Mnemonic Discrimination Task (MST). We report a lack of association between global graph theory metrics and age or memory performance. In addition, we observed a positive association between lure discrimination scores from the MST and right hippocampus centrality. Upon further investigation, we confirmed that old subjects with poor memory performance had lower right hippocampus centrality scores than young subjects with high average memory performance. These novel results connect the role of the hippocampus in global brain network information flow to cognitive function and have implications for better characterizing and predicting memory decline in aging.

Degree

College and Department

Life Sciences; Neuroscience

Rights

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