Age and Type of Cognitive Task Affect How Brain Networks Correlate with One Another

What is it about?

Previous studies have shown that the way in which networks correlate with one another may affect how people perform on cognitive tasks, especially in aging. These studies suggest that it might be the case that some of the cognitive impairments that arise as people age may be related to how specific networks communicate with one another. This study looked at correlations among 6 different cognitive networks to see how aging and the type of cognitive task being performed affect how these networks interact. Results showed that both age and cognitive task independently affect how strongly these networks are correlated with one another. Further, some connections between networks are related to performance on the task, and these relationships may be different for older and younger adults.

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Why is it important?

This is important since many previous studies have looked at the effect of age on correlations between just a couple or a few networks, or have only looked at these correlations during one specific type of task. Therefore, these findings suggest that you can find an effect of age on between-network correlations across multiple types of cognitive tasks, and across several cognitively-relevant brain networks. Additionally, since some of these connections are related to performance on the task, this suggests that specific connections between networks may be related to the differences in cognitive function that we are seeing between older and younger adults.