Imagine you have a group of young people and a group of older folks, and you want to see how their brains work when they do the Stroop Test. Well, this study used a fancy technique called functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to look at the brains of 20 young people and 13 older people while they did the test. The researchers found that even though the older people had more activation in certain parts of their brains compared to the young people, the young people actually had stronger connections between different brain regions. It’s like comparing two highways—the older people had more cars on the road in certain areas, but the connections between different highways were stronger in the young people. This could mean that as we age, our brains start losing some of those important connections that help us perform tasks. So if you’re feeling frustrated when you’re trying to multitask or remember something, it might be because your brain’s connectivity isn’t what it used to be! If you want to dive deeper into this study, check out the link below.

ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to examine the activation and functional connectivity of the prefrontal and temporal lobe in young and elder people during the Stroop test using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS).MethodsA total of 33 healthy volunteers (20 young people, mean age: 23.7 ± 3.9 years; 13 elder people, mean age: 63.9 ± 4.0 years) participated in the study. All subjects were asked to finish the Stroop Color Word Test. The oxygenated hemoglobin concentration (Delta [HbO2]) signals and the deoxygenated hemoglobin (Delta [HbR]) signals were recorded from temporopolar area (TA), pars triangularis Broca’s area (Broca), dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), and frontopolar area (FA) by fNIRS. The coherence between the left and right frontotemporal lobe delta [HbO2] oscillations in four frequency intervals (I, 0.6–2 Hz; II, 0.145–0.6 Hz; III, 0.052–0.145 Hz; and IV, 0.021–0.052 Hz) was analyzed using wavelet coherence analysis and wavelet phase coherent.ResultsIn the Stroop test, the young group was significantly better than the elder group at the responses time, whether at congruent tasks or at incongruent tasks (congruent: F = 250.295, p < 0.001; incongruent: p < 0.001). The accuracy of the two groups differed significantly when performing incongruent tasks but not when performing congruent tasks (incongruent: F = 9.498, p = 0.001; congruent: p = 0.254). Besides, only elders show significant activation in DLPFC, Broca, FA, and TA (p < 0.05) during the Stroop test, but young people did not show significant differences. In the functional connectivity of task states, younger people had stronger connections between different brain regions in both the left and right brain compared with the elderly (p < 0.05). In particular, the left and right DLPFC showed stronger connection strength in most of the brain areas. The result suggested that younger people had stronger functional connectivity of brain areas than older people when completing the task.ConclusionAccording to these results, although the cortical activation in the elder people was higher than the young people, the young showed stronger connectivity in most of the brain areas than the elders. Both sides of DLPFC and right Broca area were the most significant cortical activation in Stroop test. It was suggested that the decrease in functional connectivity in the elder people resulted in the atrophy of white matter, to which we should pay more attention.

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