Altered Coding of Environmental Boundaries in Human Aging: An fMRI Study
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Le résumé fourni par la source
Aging is associated with changes in spatial memory and navigation, yet the mechanisms underlying these changes are not yet fully understood. Environmental boundaries are among the most salient and reliable spatial cues, supporting both spatial memory and orientation. Here, we investigated how aging affects the use and the neural representation of boundary information during a virtual object location memory task. Healthy young and older adults navigated a square virtual environment while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging, allowing us to assess moment-to-moment encoding of distance to environmental boundaries in the entorhinal cortex and subiculum. Behaviorally, both age groups showed more accurate memory for objects located near boundaries, but this effect was amplified in older adults, whose spatial precision declined more steeply with increasing distance from boundaries. Older adults also exhibited a stronger bias to recall objects closer to boundaries. Analysis of navigation behavior revealed that older adults followed boundary-oriented paths regardless of target location, whereas young adults flexibly adapted their navigation based on spatial context. Neurally, older adults-but not young adults-showed significant blood-oxygen-level-dependent modulation by boundary distance in the entorhinal cortex and subiculum, with activity decreasing as participants moved farther from boundaries. This effect was most pronounced in low-performing older adults and was associated with stronger behavioral boundary bias, suggesting a maladaptive reliance on proximity-based cues. Together, our results provide converging behavioral and neural evidence that aging alters the use and representation of boundary information, with downstream effects on spatial memory. Altered boundary processing may represent a key mechanism contributing to age-related declines in spatial cognition.
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Le contrôle bibliographique ouvert
DOI retrouvé dans Crossref DOI retrouvé, mais le titre doit être comparé manuellement.
- Titre Crossref
- Altered Coding of Environmental Boundaries in Human Aging: An <scp>fMRI</scp> Study
- Date Crossref
- 16/10/2025
- Éditeur
- Wiley
- Type
- journal-article
Ce recoupement confirme des métadonnées liées au DOI. Il ne confirme ni la méthode ni les conclusions de l’étude, et il ne compte pas comme une seconde source scientifique indépendante.
Où se fait cette recherche
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German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases pays non établi dans la noticeStructure de recherche
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Boston Medical Center pays non établi dans la noticeÉtablissement de santé
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Berlin Heart (Germany) pays non établi dans la noticeEntreprise
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Center for Behavioral Brain Sciences pays non établi dans la noticeUniversité ou école supérieure
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Aging pays non établi dans la noticeInstitution
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Neurophotonics Center Boston University Boston Massachusetts USA Department of Biomedical Engineering and Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences pays non établi dans la noticeUniversité ou école supérieure
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Boston University Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine Boston Massachusetts USA Department of Neurosurgery Boston Medical Center pays non établi dans la noticeUniversité ou école supérieure
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Heartbeat Medical Berlin Germany pays non établi dans la noticeInstitution
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Otto‐von‐Guericke‐University Magdeburg Magdeburg Germany Center for Behavioural Brain Sciences (CBBS) pays non établi dans la noticeUniversité ou école supérieure
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Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg Center for Behavioural Brain Sciences (CBBS) pays non établi dans la noticeUniversité ou école supérieure
German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, Boston Medical Center et Berlin Heart (Germany), avec 7 autres affiliations.
Une affiliation ne permet pas de déduire la nationalité d’un auteur.