Schedule of Events | Symposia

Age differences in the neural correlates of perspective change may contribute to spatial memory deficits in old age

Poster Session F - Tuesday, April 1, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Sabina Srokova¹ (sabinasrokova@arizona.edu), Carol Barnes^1,2, Arne Ekstrom^1,2; ¹Psychology Department, University of Arizona, ²Evelyn F. McKnight Brain Institute, University of Arizona

Spatial memory involves remembering places across different perspectives. Prior research suggests that older adults may experience declines in spatial memory compared to younger adults, but the role of perspective switching in these differences is unclear. In the present study, young and older participants underwent fMRI as they completed a spatial memory task. Participants viewed virtual rooms containing trial-unique sets of five objects placed in random locations. After a 7 second delay, the room was viewed again, either from the same or a rotated perspective, and participants indicated whether one of the five objects had moved to a new location. Neural correlates of perspective change were examined within two a priori ROIs (the parahippocampal cortex [PHC] and hippocampus [HC]), and only during those trials where the objects’ locations were unchanged. Relative to the first presentation, repeated presentation of the same perspective resulted in reduced fMRI BOLD signals across both ROIs, while rotated perspectives resulted in lower fMRI BOLD in the HC but not the PHC. According to theories of fMRI repetition adaptation, these results suggest that spatial representations are perspective-independent in the HC but perspective-specific in the PHC. However, age comparisons revealed that hippocampal repetition effects elicited by rotated perspectives were significantly lower in older relative to younger adults. Additionally, generalized linear mixed effects modeling revealed that lower hippocampal repetition effects were associated with lower probability of correct memory judgements. Therefore, the present data point to the possibility that hippocampal perspective-independent representations may be impaired in old age.

Topic Area: PERCEPTION & ACTION: Development & aging