Research Paper Volume 12, Issue 13 pp 12582—12597

Modulation of attention networks serving reorientation in healthy aging

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Figure 4. Age modulates frontoparietal networks during attentional reorienting. (A) Whole-brain voxel-wise correlational analysis of alpha (8-14 Hz, top) and beta (14-22 Hz, bottom) validity maps (i.e., invalid – valid) and age revealed significant positive correlations between alpha and beta validity effects in left parietal cortex and frontal eye fields (FEF), respectively, and age. Images in two planes are shown for each. (B) The amplitude (pseudo-t) of the peak voxels shown in (A) were extracted and plotted as a function of age (x-axis) to identify the origin and distribution of the age-validity effect. Again, the parietal alpha data appears on the top with the frontal beta below. (C) Given this finding, the sample was stratified into age groups (i.e., younger and older) based on ± 0.5 SD of the full group’s mean age, such that subjects above 0.5 SDs were defined as the older group, and those below 0.5 SDs were defined as the younger group. This stratification can be seen in (B). The average amplitude of each conditional response (valid and invalid) is plotted to the right. Post-hoc paired t-tests were then conducted to identify the direction of the validity effect in each group. Asterisks mark significant validity effects (p < .05), with error bars reflecting the SEM. ** p < .001.