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Age-related decline in cognitive flexibility and inadequate preparation: evidence from task-state network analysis

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Abstract

Behavioral evidence showed decreased cognitive flexibility in older adults. However, task-based network mechanisms of cognitive flexibility in aging (CFA) remain unclear. Here, we provided the first task-state network evidence that CFA was associated with inadequate preparation for switching trials by revealing age-related changes in functional integration. We examined functional integration in a letter–number switch task that distinguished between the cue and target stages. Both young and older adults showed decreased functional integration from the cue stage to the target stage, indicating that control-related processes were executed as the task progressed. However, compared to young adults, older adults showed less cue-to-target reduction in functional integration, which was primarily driven by higher network integration in the target stage. Moreover, less cue-to-target reductions were correlated with age-related decreases in task performance in the switch task. To sum up, compared to young adults, older adults pre-executed less control-related processes in the cue stage and more control-related processes in the target stage. Therefore, the decline in cognitive flexibility in older adults was associated with inadequate preparation for the impending demands of cognitive switching. This study offered novel insights into network mechanisms underlying CFA. Furthermore, we highlighted that training the function of brain networks, in conjunction with providing more preparation time for older adults, may be beneficial to their cognitive flexibility.

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This work is supported by a grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32371105).

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  1. Haishuo Xia and Ting Li contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China

    Haishuo Xia & Yongqing Hou

  2. Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

    Ting Li

  3. School of Psychology, Shanghai University of Sport, Shanghai, 200438, China

    Zijin Liu & Antao Chen

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  1. Haishuo Xia
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Xia, H., Li, T., Hou, Y. et al. Age-related decline in cognitive flexibility and inadequate preparation: evidence from task-state network analysis. GeroScience (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-024-01135-x

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