Regional specificity of age effects on the neural correlates of episodic retrieval

We investigated age-related differences in episodic retrieval using a source memory procedure. Age-related differences in retrieval-related activity were analyzed in conditions where source recollection performance was statistically equivalent in young and older subjects. Analyses of BOLD activity revealed a network of regions where recollection effects were equivalent in magnitude in the two age groups. There were no regions where these effects were of greater magnitude in young than in older subjects. In some regions, however, there was a crossover interaction, such that retrieval-related effects reversed in direction between the two age groups. Further analyses of these interactions revealed a dissociation between a posterior hippocampal region where recollection-related activity was confined to the older group, and right fusiform and occipital regions where, in the young group only, activity elicited by studied items was of lower magnitude than activity to new items. We interpret the first of these age-related effects as an example of ‘over-recruitment’ in response to decline in neural efficiency, and discuss whether the second effect indexes an age-related decline in repetition priming.