Schedule of Events | Symposia

Age-related changes in neural representations during memory retrieval

Poster Session B - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Cortney M. Howard¹ (cortney.howard@duke.edu), Shenyang Huang¹, Lifu Deng², Roberto Cabeza¹, Simon W. Davis¹; ¹Duke University, ²Cleveland Clinic

Recent research indicates that aging reduces the distinctiveness of visual representations in posterior occipitotemporal regions during object encoding, impairing older adults' ability to remember visual details. In contrast, semantic representations in anterior regions are enhanced, potentially compensating for visual declines. However, it remains unclear whether age-related changes in neural representations are present during memory retrieval. In this study, we applied representational similarity analyses (RSA) to assess visual and semantic representational strength in object-processing regions during conceptual and perceptual retrieval using functional magnetic resonance imaging in 33 younger and 31 older adults. Behaviorally, older adults exhibited significantly weaker perceptual memory performance and similar conceptual memory performance relative to younger adults. RSA revealed that older adults demonstrated significantly degraded visual representations during conceptual retrieval in both anterior and posterior regions, including the early visual cortex (EVC), lateral occipital cortex (LOC), fusiform gyrus (Fug), posterior and anterior inferior temporal cortices (pITC and aITC), and inferior parietal cortex (IPL). Similarly, during perceptual retrieval, age-related declines of visual representations were observed in the parahippocampal gyrus (PHG), aITG, pITG, and IPL, and older adults with weaker visual representations in the aITG exhibited stronger semantic representations in the Fug, PHG, and aITG during conceptual retrieval. Critically, semantic representation strength in the aITG positively predicts conceptual and perceptual memory performance in older adults. These findings demonstrate that visual representation degradation in posterior regions extends to anterior regions during memory retrieval and suggest a compensatory role of semantic processing in mitigating visual declines.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Development & aging