Schedule of Events | Symposia

The effects of aging on task representations during rapid instructed task learning

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 29, 2025, 3:00 – 5:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Kirsten L. Peterson¹ (klp173@newark.rutgers.edu), Luke J. Hearne², Ravi D. Mill¹, Michael W. Cole¹; ¹Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, United States, ²QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Normal aging is associated with declines in cognitive abilities, including the ability to learn new tasks from instructions. Rapid instructed task learning (RITL) enables humans to perform complex new tasks, often on the first attempt. It is theorized to depend on the frontoparietal control network (FPN) integrating task-relevant information from diverse regions. In previous fMRI studies, however, healthy older adults have shown less distinct task-related neural representations, perhaps from decreased gain and signal-to-noise ratios in neural populations. We therefore tested the effect of age on RITL task representations. We acquired fMRI scans of younger (18-35 years old, n=42) and older (>65 years old, n=34) adults while they performed a stimulus-response RITL task, which mapped specific visual stimuli to button press responses according to novel and previously practiced rules. For both conditions, we estimated cortical regions' total representational similarities during instructions, and stimulus and response category representations during rule implementation. In younger adults, representational similarities during instructions were highest in the visual, dorsal attention, and frontoparietal networks. Similarities increased for novel instructions, particularly in the FPN, with additional control regions also recruited. In older adults, representational similarities during practiced instructions were higher and spread across more regions, including those additional control areas. Age-related differences in novel instruction and practiced/novel stimulus representations were less pervasive, but all showed older adults to have weaker representations in mediotemporal cortex and stronger in precuneus (regions of the default mode network connected to the hippocampus) and weaker representations in ventral visual areas.

Topic Area: EXECUTIVE PROCESSES: Development &aging