Imagine you’re trying to solve a puzzle, but there’s someone constantly distracting you with interesting and meaningful sounds. Surprisingly, these sounds might actually help your performance! In a recent study, researchers found that older adults who listened to task-irrelevant but meaningful sounds while performing a cognitive task showed improved performance compared to when there were no sounds. The researchers used fMRI to investigate the neural correlates of this sound facilitation effect and discovered that it activated a network of brain regions involved in auditory processing, attention, and emotion. The magnitude of the effect was also related to changes in reaction time and activation of specific brain areas like the bilateral auditory cortex and the superior parietal lobule. Interestingly, older adults with a history of falls showed even greater activation in the superior parietal lobule, suggesting that they needed to recruit more neural resources to cope with interference. These findings support the dedifferentiation hypothesis of cognitive aging, which suggests that older adults may need to compensate for age-related decline by recruiting additional brain regions. If you’re interested in learning more about how sounds can influence cognitive performance as we age, check out the full article!
