Top-down suppression deficit underlies working memory impairment in normal aging
Adam Gazzaley and colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study how normal ageing affects top-down modulation, the process by which attention and memory enhance or suppress sensory processing according to task goals. Healthy older adults were markedly worse than younger adults at suppressing cortical activity linked to task-irrelevant information, while their enhancement of task-relevant activity was preserved. This suppression-specific attention deficit was correlated with poorer working memory performance.
Adam Gazzaley and colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study how normal ageing affects top-down modulation, the process by which attention and memory enhance or suppress sensory processing according to task goals. Healthy older adults were markedly worse than younger adults at suppressing cortical activity linked to task-irrelevant information, while their enhancement of task-relevant activity was preserved. This suppression-specific attention deficit was correlated with poorer working memory performance.
Written from the abstract read 2026-10-22 on the Nature Neuroscience article page.
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Gazzaley, A., Cooney, J. W., Rissman, J., & D’Esposito, M. (2005). Top-down suppression deficit underlies working memory impairment in normal aging. Nature Neuroscience, 8(10), 1298-1300. doi:10.1038/nn1543