Seniors with good comprehension appear to up-regulate portions of the neural substrate for WM during sentence processing to achieve comprehension accuracy that equals young subjects. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the neural basis for sentence comprehension includes dissociable but interactive large-scale neural networks supporting core written sentence processes and related cognitive resources involved in WM. Seniors additionally recruited right parietal cortex for this sentence-specific form of WM. screen and were presented with the tasks using PsyScope. Younger subjects recruited right posterolateral temporal cortex for sentences with a long noun-gap linkage. task to tap working memory (e.g., reading span, listening span, operation span), are scarce. Keywords: working memory, Mild Cognitive Impairment, Alzheimers disease, assessment, intervention, complex span, cognitive training, attentional control. While seniors had less left parietal recruitment than younger subjects, left premotor cortex, and dorsal portions of left inferior frontal cortex showed greater activation in seniors compared to younger subjects. Differences in activation patterns for seniors compared to younger subjects were due largely to changes in brain regions associated with a verbal WM network. Although the original version of this task was verbally administered, recent versions are generally administered via computer. We found that young and senior subjects both recruit a core written sentence processing network, including left posterolateral temporal and bilateral occipital cortex for all sentences, and ventral portions of left inferior frontal cortex for object-relative sentences with a long noun-gap linkage. The Digit Span Task is a simple behavioral measure of working memory capacity, the cognitive ability to store and manage information on a transient basis. The sentences varied in their grammatical features (subject-relative vs object-relative subordinate clause) and their verbal working memory (WM) demands (short vs long antecedent noun-gap linkage). Memory span involves processes of attention, associability, imagery, and memory.
Memory span is a person’s ability to reproduce immediately, after one presentation, a series of discrete stimuli in their original order. We monitored regional brain activity in 13 younger subjects and 11 healthy seniors matched for sentence comprehension accuracy while they answered a simple probe about written sentences. Traditional tests of memory span use strings of digits or letters to assess the memory span. Sentence comprehension declines with age, but the neural basis for this change is unclear.