Effects of healthy aging on human primary visual cortex

Health
Alyssa A Brewer, Brian Barton

Abstract

Aging often results in reduced visual acuity from changes in both the eye and neural circuits [1-4]. In normally aging subjects, primary visual cortex has been shown to have reduced responses to visual stimulation [5]. It is not known, however, to what extent aging affects visual field representations and population receptive sizes in human primary visual cortex. Here we use functional MRI (fMRI) and population receptive field (pRF) modeling [6] to measure angular and eccentric retinotopic representations and population receptive fields in primary visual cortex in healthy aging subjects ages 57 - 70 and in healthy young volunteers ages 24 - 36 (n = 9). Retinotopic stimuli consisted of black and white, drifting checkerboards comprising moving bars 11 deg in radius. Primary visual cortex (V1) was clearly identifiable along the calcarine sulcus in all hemispheres. There was a significant decrease in the surface area of V1 from 0 to 3 deg eccentricity in the aging subjects with respect to the young subjects (p = 0.039). The coherence of the fMRI% BOLD modulation was significantly decreased in the aging subjects compared to the young subjects in the more peripheral eccentricity band from 7 to 10 deg (p = 0.029). Finally, pRF sizes w...Continue Reading

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Citations

Jun 12, 2018·Annual Review of Vision Science·Serge O Dumoulin, Tomas Knapen
Nov 19, 2019·Frontiers in Neural Circuits·Stephen RamanoëlAngelo Arleo
Jan 31, 2020·Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience·Lília JorgeMiguel Castelo-Branco
Mar 23, 2021·Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience·Yuchen XieLeslie A Zebrowitz

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