Visual search and the aging brain: Discerning the effects of age-related brain volume shrinkage on alertness, feature binding, and attentional control

Neuropsychology

Volumn 27, Issue 1, 2013, Pages 48-59

  Müller Oehring, Eva M ^a,b   Schulte, Tilman ^b   Rohlfing, Torsten ^b   Pfefferbaum, Adolf ^a,b   Sullivan, Edith V ^a  

^a STANFORD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE   (United States)

^b SRI INTERNATIONAL   (United States)

Author keywords

Aging; Attentional cueing; Neuroimaging; Perceptual grouping; Regional brain volumes; Single feature and feature conjunction search

Indexed keywords

ACCURACY; ADULT; AGE; AGED; AGING; ALERTNESS; ARTICLE; ASSOCIATION; ATTENTION; BRAIN SIZE; BRAIN TISSUE; CORPUS CALLOSUM; FEMALE; HUMAN; HUMAN EXPERIMENT; MALE; MENTAL TASK; NORMAL HUMAN; NUCLEAR MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING; PARIETAL LOBE; PERCEPTION; PRIORITY JOURNAL; RESPONSE TIME; STIMULUS; TEMPORAL CORTEX; TEMPORAL LOBE; THALAMUS; VALIDITY; WHITE MATTER;

EID: 84881043068     PISSN: 08944105     EISSN: 19311559     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1037/a0030921     Document Type: Article

References (83)

1. American Psychiatric Association. (2001). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th ed., text revision. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association.
2. Anderson, E. J., & Rees, G. (2011). The neural correlates of spatial orienting in the human superior colliculus. Journal of Neurophysiology, 106, 2273-2284. doi:10.1152/jn.00286.2011
3. Bach, M. (1996). The "Freiburg Visual Acuity Test" - Automatic measurement of visual acuity. Optometry and Vision Science, 73, 49-53. doi:10.1097/00006324-199601000-00008
4. Benedetti, B., Charil, A., Rovaris, M., Judica, E., Valsasina, P., Sormani, M. P., & Filippi, M. (2006). Influence of aging on brain gray and white matter changes assessed by conventional, MT, and DT MRI. Neurology, 66, 535-539. doi:10.1212/01.wnl.0000198510.73363.c6
5. Benjamini, Y., Drai, D., Elmer, G., Kafkafi, N., & Golani, I. (2001). Controlling the false discovery rate in behavior genetics research. Behavioural Brain Research, 125, 279 -284. doi:10.1016/S0166- 4328(01)00297-2
6. Bisley, J. W., Mirpour, K., Arcizet, F., & Ong, W. S. (2011). The role of the lateral intraparietal area in orienting attention and its implications for visual search. European Journal of Neuroscience, 33, 1982-1990. doi: 10.1111/j.1460-9568.2011.07700.x
7. Burton-Danner, K., Owsley, C., & Jackson, G. R. (2001). Aging and feature search: The effect of search area. Experimental Aging Research, 27, 1-18. doi:10.1080/036107301750046115
8. Burzynska, A. Z., Nagel, I. E., Preuschhof, C., Gluth, S., Bäckman, L., Li, S. C., . . . Heekeren, H. R. (2012). Cortical thickness is linked to executive functioning in adulthood and aging. Human Brain Mapping, 33, 1607-1620.
9. Cabeza, R. (2002). Hemispheric asymmetry reduction in older adults: The HAROLD model. Psychology and Aging, 17, 85-100. Review. doi:10.1037/0882-7974.17.1.85
10. Chanraud, S., Pitel, A. L., Rohlfing, T., Pfefferbaum, A., & Sullivan, E. V. (2010). Dual tasking and working memory in alcoholism: Relation to frontocerebellar circuitry. Neuropsychopharmacology, 35, 1868-1878. doi:10.1038/npp.2010.56
11. Corbetta, M., Miezin, F. M., Shulman, G. L., & Petersen, S. E. (1991). Selective attention modulates extrastriate visual regions in humans during visual feature discrimination and recognition. Ciba Foundation symposium, 163, 165-175.
12. Corbetta, M., Miezin, F. M., Shulman, G. L., & Petersen, S. E. (1993). A PET study of visuospatial attention. The Journal of Neuroscience, 13, 1202-1226.
13. Corbetta, M., & Shulman, G. L. (1998). Human cortical mechanisms of visual attention during orienting and search. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B, Biological Sciences, 353, 1353-1362. doi:10.1098/rstb.1998.0289
14. Coull, J. T., Frith, C. D., Büchel, C., & Nobre, A. C. (2000). Orienting attention in time: Behavioural and neuroanatomical distinction between exogenous and endogenous shifts. Neuropsychologia, 38, 808-819. doi:10.1016/S0028-3932(99)00132-3
15. Crovitz, H. F., & Zener, K. (1962). A group-test for assessing hand- and eye-dominance. The American Journal of Psychology, 75, 271-276. doi:10.2307/1419611
16. Davis, S. W., Kragel, J. E., Madden, D. J., & Cabeza, R. (2011). The architecture of cross-hemispheric communication in the aging brain: Linking behavior to functional and structural connectivity. Cerebral Cortex, 22, 232-242.
17. Donner, T., Kettermann, A., Diesch, E., Ostendorf, F., Villringer, A., & Brandt, S. A. (2000). Involvement of the human frontal eye field and multiple parietal areas in covert visual selection during conjunction search. European Journal of Neuroscience, 12, 3407-3414. doi:10.1046/ j.1460-9568.2000.00223.x
18. Driscoll, I., Davatzikos, C., An, Y., Wu, X., Shen, D., Kraut, M., & Resnick, S. M. (2009). Longitudinal pattern of regional brain volume change differentiates normal aging from MCI. Neurology, 72, 1906- 1913. doi:10.1212/WNL.0b013e3181a82634
19. Duncan, J., & Humphreys, G. W. (1989). Visual search and stimulus similarity. Psychological Review, 96, 433-458. doi:10.1037/0033-295X .96.3.433
20. Faust, M. E., Balota, D. A., Spieler, D. H., & Ferraro, F. R. (1999). Individual differences in information-processing rate and account: Implications for group differences in response latency. Psychological Bulletin, 125, 777-799. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.125.6.777
21. Fernandez-Duque, D., & Posner, M. I. (1997). Relating the mechanisms of orienting and alerting. Neuropsychologia, 35, 477-486. doi:10.1016/ S0028-3932(96)00103-0
22. Fjell, A. M., & Walhovd, K. B. (2010). Structural brain changes in aging: Courses, causes and cognitive consequences. Reviews in the Neurosciences, 21, 187-221. Review. doi:10.1515/REVNEURO.2010.21.3.187
23. Folk, C. L., & Lincourt, A. E. (1996). The effects of age on guided conjunction search. Experimental Aging Research, 22, 99-118. doi: 10.1080/03610739608254000
24. Gilmore, G. C., Tobias, T., & Royer, F. (1985). Aging and similarity grouping in visual search. Journal of Gerontology, 40, 586-592.
25. Greenwood, P. M., Parasuraman, R., & Alexander, G. E. (1997). Controlling the focus of spatial attention during visual search: Effects of advanced aging and Alzheimer disease. Neuropsychology, 11, 3-12. doi:10.1037/0894-4105.11.1.3
26. Grober, E., & Sliwinski, M. (1991). Development and validation of a model for estimating premorbid verbal intelligence in the elderly. Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology, 13, 933-949. doi: 10.1080/01688639108405109
27. Han, S. (2004). Interactions between proximity and similarity grouping: An event-related brain potential study in humans. Neuroscience Letters, 367, 40-43. doi:10.1016/j.neulet.2004.05.098
28. Harter, M. R., & Guido, W. (1980). Attention to pattern orientation: Negative cortical potentials, reaction time, and the selection process. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 49, 461-475. doi:10.1016/0013-4694(80)90389-2
29. Himmelbach, M., Erb, M., & Karnath, H. O. (2007). Activation of superior colliculi in humans during visual exploration. BMC Neuroscience, 8, 66. doi:10.1186/1471-2202-8-66
30. Hollingshead, A., & Redlich, F. (1958). Social Class and Mental Illness: A Community Sample. John Wiley and Sons, New York. doi:10.1037/ 10645-000
31. Hommel, B., Li, K. Z., & Li, S. C. (2004). Visual search across the life span. Developmental Psychology, 40, 545-558. doi:10.1037/0012-1649 .40.4.545
32. Hopf, J. M., Boelmans, K., Schoenfeld, M. A., Luck, S. J., & Heinze, H. J. (2004). Attention to features precedes attention to locations in visual search: Evidence from electromagnetic brain responses in humans. The Journal of Neuroscience, 24, 1822-1832. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI .3564-03.2004
33. Humphrey, D. G., & Kramer, A. F. (1997). Age differences in visual search for feature, conjunction, and triple-conjunction targets. Psychology and Aging, 12, 704-717. doi:10.1037/0882-7974.12.4.704
34. Ishihara, S. (1917). Tests for colour-blindness. Handaya, Tokyo, Japan: Hongo Harukicho.
35. Jernigan, T. L., Archibald, S. L., Fennema-Notestine, C., Gamst, A. C., Stout, J. C., Bonner, J., & Hesselink, J. R. (2001). Effects of age on tissues and regions of the cerebrum and cerebellum. Neurobiology of Aging, 22, 581-594. doi:10.1016/S0197-4580(01)00217-2
36. Kellermann, T., Reske, M., Jansen, A., Satrapi, P., Shah, N. J., Schneider, F., & Habel, U. (2011). Latencies in BOLD response during visual attention processes. Brain Research, 1386, 127-138. doi:10.1016/j .brainres.2011.02.023
37. Kennedy, K. M., Rodrigue, K. M., Head, D., Gunning-Dixon, F., & Raz, N. (2009). Neuroanatomical and cognitive mediators of age-related differences in perceptual priming and learning. Neuropsychology, 23, 475-491. doi:10.1037/a0015377
38. Knyazeva, M. G., Fornari, E., Meuli, R., Innocenti, G., & Maeder, P. (2006). Imaging of a synchronous neuronal assembly in the human visual brain. NeuroImage, 29, 593-604. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2005 .07.045
39. Kochunov, P., Glahn, D. C., Lancaster, J., Thompson, P. M., Kochunov, V., Rogers, B., . . . Williamson, D. E. (2011). Fractional anisotropy of cerebral white matter and thickness of cortical gray matter across the lifespan. Neuroimage, 58, 41-49. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.05 .050
40. Kramer, A. F., Martin-Emerson, R., Larish, J. F., & Andersen, G. J. (1996). Aging and filtering by movement in visual search. The Journals of Gerontology Series B, Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 51, 201-216. doi:10.1093/geronb/51B.4.P201
41. Li, L., Gratton, C., Yao, D., & Knight, R. T. (2010). Role of frontal and parietal cortices in the control of bottom-up and top-down attention in humans. Brain Research, 1344, 173-184. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2010 .05.016
42. Madden, D. J., Gottlob, L. R., & Allen, P. A. (1999). Adult age differences in visual search accuracy: Attentional guidance and target detectability. Psychology and Aging, 14, 683-694. doi:10.1037/0882-7974.14.4.683
43. Madden, D. J., Pierce, T. W., & Allen, P. A. (1996). Adult age differences in the use of distractor homogeneity during visual search. Psychology and Aging, 11, 454-474. doi:10.1037/0882-7974.11.3.454
44. Madden, D. J., Spaniol, J., Whiting, W. L., Bucur, B., Provenzale, J. M., Cabeza, R., . . . Huettel, S. A. (2007). Adult age differences in the functional neuroanatomy of visual attention: A combined fMRI and DTI study. Neurobiology of Aging, 28, 459-476. doi:10.1016/j.neurobiolaging .2006.01.005
45. McMains, S. & Kastner, S. (2011). Interactions of top-down and bottom-up mechanisms in human visual cortex. The Journal of Neuroscience, 31, 587-597. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3766-10.2011
46. Mordkoff, J. T., Yantis, S., & Egeth, H. E. (1990). Detecting conjunctions of color and form in parallel. Perception & Psychophysics, 48, 157-168. doi:10.3758/BF03207083
47. Müller-Oehring, E. M., Schulte, T., Raassi, C., Pfefferbaum, A., & Sullivan, E. V. (2007). Local-global interference is modulated by age, sex and anterior corpus callosum size. Brain Research, 1142, 189-205. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2007.01.062
48. Nakayama, K., & Silverman, G. H. (1986). Serial and parallel processing of visual feature conjunctions. Nature, 320, 264-265. doi:10.1038/ 320264a0
49. Nyberg, L., Salami, A., Andersson, M., Eriksson, J., Kalpouzos, G., Kauppi, K., . . . Nilsson, L. G. (2010). Longitudinal evidence for diminished frontal cortex function in aging. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 107, 22682- 22686. doi:10.1073/pnas.1012651108
50. Pardo, J. V., Lee, J. T., Sheikh, S. A., Surerus-Johnson, C., Shah, H., Munch, K. R., . . . Dysken, M. W. (2007). Where the brain grows old: Decline in anterior cingulate and medial prefrontal function with normal aging. Neuroimage, 35, 1231-1237. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2006.12 .044
51. Peelen, M. V., & Kastner, S. (2011). A neural basis for real-world visual search in human occipitotemporal cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108, 12125- 12130. doi:10.1073/pnas.1101042108
52. Peelle, J. E., Cusack, R., & Henson, R. N. (2012). Adjusting for global effects in voxel-based morphometry: Gray matter decline in normal aging. Neuroimage, 60, 1503-1516. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.12 .086
53. Pfefferbaum, A., Mathalon, D. H., Sullivan, E. V., Rawles, J. M., Zipursky, R. B., & Lim, K. O. (1994). A quantitative magnetic resonance imaging study of changes in brain morphology from infancy to late adulthood. Archives of Neurology, 51, 874 - 887. doi:10.1001/archneur.1994 .00540210046012
54. Pfefferbaum, A., Rohlfing, T., Rosenbloom, M. J., & Sullivan, E. V. (2012). Combining atlas-based parcellation of regional brain data acquired across scanners at 1.5 T and 3.0 T field strengths. NeuroImage, 60, 940-951. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.01.092
55. Plude, D. J., & Doussard-Roosevelt, J. A. (1989). Aging, selective attention, and feature integration. Psychology and Aging, 4, 98-105. doi: 10.1037/0882-7974.4.1.98
56. Posner, M. I. (2008). Measuring alertness. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1129, 193-199. Review. doi:10.1196/annals.1417.011
57. Posner, M. I., & Petersen, S. E. (1990). The attention system of the human brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 13, 25-42. doi:10.1146/annurev .ne.13.030190.000325
58. Raz, N., Rodrigue, K. M., & Haacke, E. M. (2007). Brain aging and its modifiers: Insights from in vivo neuromorphometry and susceptibility weighted imaging. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1097, 84-93. doi:10.1196/annals.1379.018
59. Reuter-Lorenz, P. A., Stanczak, L., & Miller, A. (1999). Neural recruitment and cognitive aging: Two hemispheres are better than one especially as you age. Psychological Science, 10, 494-500. doi:10.1111/ 1467-9280.00195
60. Rohlfing, T., Zahr, N. M., Sullivan, E. V., & Pfefferbaum, A. (2010). The SRI24 multichannel atlas of normal adult human brain structure. Human Brain Mapping, 31, 798-819. doi:10.1002/hbm.20906
61. Sassoon, S. A., Fama, R., Rosenbloom, M. J., O'Reilly, A., Pfefferbaum, A., & Sullivan, E. V. (2007). Component cognitive and motor processes of the digit symbol test: Differential deficits in alcoholism, HIV infection, and their comorbidity. Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, 31, 1315-1324. doi:10.1111/j.1530-0277.2007.00426.x
62. Schulte, T., Müller-Oehring, E. M., Chanraud, S., Rosenbloom, M. J., Pfefferbaum, A., & Sullivan, E. V. (2011). Age-related reorganization of functional networks for successful conflict resolution: A combined functional and structural MRI study. Neurobiology of Aging, 32, 2075-2090.
63. Schulte, T., Müller-Oehring, E. M., Rohlfing, T., Pfefferbaum, A., & Sullivan, E. V. (2010). White matter fiber degradation attenuates hemispheric asymmetry when integrating visuomotor information. The Journal of Neuroscience, 30, 12168 -12178. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI .2160-10.2010
64. Scialfa, C. T., Esau, S. P., & Joffe, K. M. (1998). Age, target-distractor similarity, and visual search. Experimental Aging Research, 24, 337- 358. doi:10.1080/036107398244184
65. Shipp, S. (2004). The brain circuitry of attention. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 223-230. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2004.03.004
66. Sigurdsson, S., Aspelund, T., Forsberg, L., Fredriksson, J., Kjartansson, O., Oskarsdottir, B., . . . Gudnason, V. (2012). Brain tissue volumes in the general population of the elderly The AGES-Reykjavik Study. Neuro- Image, 59, 3862-3870.
67. Smith, S. M. (2002). Fast robust automated brain extraction. Human Brain Mapping, 17, 143-155. doi:10.1002/hbm.10062
68. Sokolov, E. N. (1963). Perception and the conditioned reflex. New York, NY: Macmillan.
69. Sturm, W., Schmenk, B., Fimm, B., Specht, K., Weis, S., Thron, A., & Willmes, K. (2006). Spatial attention: More than intrinsic alerting. Experimental Brain Research, 171, 16-25. doi:10.1007/s00221-005- 0253-1
70. Sturm, W., & Willmes, K. (2001). On the functional neuroanatomy of intrinsic and phasic alertness. Neuroimage, 14, S76-84. doi:10.1006/ nimg.2001.0839
71. Sullivan, E. V., Rohlfing, T., & Pfefferbaum, A. (2010). Longitudinal study of callosal microstructure in the normal adult aging brain using quantitative DTI fiber tracking. Developmental Neuropsychology, 35, 233-256. Review. doi:10.1080/87565641003689556
72. Sullivan, E. V., Rosenbloom, M., Serventi, K. L., & Pfefferbaum, A. (2004). Effects of age and sex on volumes of the thalamus, pons, and cortex. Neurobiology of Aging, 25, 185-192. doi:10.1016/S0197- 4580(03)00044-7
73. Taki, Y., Kinomura, S., Sato, K., Goto, R., Kawashima, R., & Fukuda, H. (2011). A longitudinal study of gray matter volume decline with age and modifying factors. Neurobiology of Aging, 32, 907-915. doi:10.1016/j .neurobiolaging.2009.05.003
74. Töllner, T., Zehetleitner, M., Krummenacher, J., & Müller, H. J. (2011). Perceptual basis of redundancy gains in visual pop-out search. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23, 137-150. doi:10.1162/jocn.2010.21422
75. Tomasi, D., & Volkow, N. D. (2011). Aging and functional brain networks. Molecular Psychiatry, 17, 471, 549-558.
76. Treisman, A. M., & Gelade, G. (1980). A feature-integration theory of attention. Cognitive Psychology, 12, 97-136. doi:10.1016/0010- 0285(80)90005-5
77. Tzourio-Mazoyer, N., Landeau, B., Papathanassiou, D., Crivello, F., Etard, O., Delcroix, N., . . . Joliot, M. (2002). Automated anatomical labeling of activations in SPM using a macroscopic anatomical parcellation of the MNI MRI single-subject brain. Neuroimage, 15, 273-289. doi:10.1006/ nimg.2001.0978
78. Voineskos, A. N., Rajji, T. K., Lobaugh, N. J., Miranda, D., Shenton, M. E., Kennedy, J. L., . . . Mulsant, B. H. (2012). Age-related decline in white matter tract integrity and cognitive performance: A DTI tractography and structural equation modeling study. Neurobiology of Aging, 33, 21-34.
79. Weidner, R., Krummenacher, J., Reimann, B., Müller, H. J., & Fink, G. R. (2009). Sources of top-down control in visual search. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 21, 2100-2113. doi:10.1162/jocn.2008.21173
80. Wilkinson, D. T., Halligan, P. W., Henson, R. N., & Dolan, R. J. (2002). The effects of interdistracter similarity on search processes in superior parietal cortex. NeuroImage, 15, 611-619. doi:10.1006/nimg.2001.0993
81. Wolfe, J. M. (1994). Visual search in continuous, naturalistic stimuli. Vision Research, 34, 1187-1195. doi:10.1016/0042-6989(94)90300-X
82. Xu, G. Q., Lan, Y., Huang, D. F., Rao, D. Z., Pei, Z., Chen, L., & Zeng, J. S. (2010). Visuospatial attention deficit in patients with local brain lesions. Brain Research, 1322, 153-159. doi:10.1016/j.brainres.2010.01 .072
83. Zhang, Y., Brady, M., & Smith, S. (2001). Segmentation of brain MR images through a hidden Markov random field model and the expectation maximization algorithm. IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging, 20, 45-57. doi:10.1109/42.906424