Author ORCID Identifier
Preston P. Thakral: 0000-0001-6603-6186
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-1-2020
Publication Title
Neurobiology of Aging
Abstract
Despite advances in understanding the consequences of age-related episodic memory decline for future simulation, much remains unknown regarding changes in the neural underpinnings of future thinking with age. We used a repetition suppression paradigm to explore age-related changes in the neural correlates of emotional future simulation. Younger and older adults simulated positive, negative, and neutral future events either 2 or 5 times. Reductions in neural activity for events simulated 5 versus 2 times (i.e., repetition suppression) identify brain regions responsive to the specific emotion of simulated events. Critically, older adults showed greater repetition suppression than younger adults in the temporal pole for negative simulations, and the cuneus for positive simulations. These findings suggest that older adults distance themselves from negative future possibilities by thinking about them in a more semantic way, consistent with the view that older adults down-regulate negative affect and up-regulate positive affect. More broadly this study increases our understanding of the impact of aging on the neural underpinnings of episodic future simulation.
Keywords
Aging, Emotion, Episodic future thinking
Volume
94
First Page
287
Last Page
297
DOI
10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2020.06.016
ISSN
01974580
Recommended Citation
Devitt, Aleea L.; Thakral, Preston P.; Szpunar, Karl; Addis, Donna Rose; and Schacter, Daniel L., "Age-Related Changes in Repetition Suppression of Neural Activity During Emotional Future Simulation" (2020). Psychology: Faculty Publications, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
https://scholarworks.smith.edu/psy_facpubs/248
Comments
Peer reviewed accepted manuscript.