Selective Attention and Inhibitory Control in the Aging Brain

Abstract In advanced age, selective attention and inhibitory control processes are known to decline. This chapter summarizes age-related changes in cognition and neural activity associated with information that is selectively attended/ignored across the domains of spatial location, feature, object identity and internally-based items. Several themes emerge that support age-related declines in selective attention and inhibitory control generalize across the type of information. Notably, older adults recruit regions within prefrontal cortex to compensate for declines in sensory processes, resulting in comparable performance to younger adults. In addition, age-related performance declines become pronounced with increased task difficulty due to limitations in the efficiency or availability of cognitive resources.