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Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Advance Access originally published online on August 24, 2007
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 2007 2(4):292-302; doi:10.1093/scan/nsm024
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© The Author (2007). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Age-related differences in brain activity underlying identification of emotional expressions in faces

Michelle L. Keightley1,2,3, Kimberly S. Chiew2, Gordon Winocur3,4,6 and Cheryl L. Grady3,4,5

1Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, University of Toronto, 2Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, 3Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care, 4Department of Psychology, 5Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, and 6Department of Psychology, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario, Canada

We used fMRI to explore brain activity in young and old adults, while they viewed and labeled faces expressing different emotions as well as neutral expressions. Older adults had significantly greater difficulty identifying expressions of sadness, anger and disgust than young adults. Both groups performed at ceiling for happy expressions. The functional neuroimaging data revealed that both young and old adults recruited a pattern of activity that distinguished happy expressions from all other expressions, but the patterns were age-specific. Older adults showed increased activity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex, lingual gyrus and premotor cortex for happy expressions, whereas younger adults recruited a more widely distributed set of regions including the amgydala, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, lateral prefrontal regions and bilateral inferior parietal and superior temporal areas. Conversely, younger adults showed more activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate for other types of expressions, and older adults had more activity in dorsal cingulate, as well as middle and inferior frontal gyri, somatosensory cortex, insula and middle temporal regions. These results support previous research demonstrating age differences in brain activity during emotional processing, and suggest possible age-related differences in cognitive strategy during identification of happy faces, despite no effect of age on this ability.

Keywords: aging; emotion; fMRI; faces

Correspondence should be addressed to Michelle L. Keightley, Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, Rehabilitation Sciences Building (Centre for Function and Well-Being), University of Toronto, 160-500 University Avenue, 9th Floor, Toronto, Ontario M5G 1V7, Canada. E-mail: michelle.keightley{at}utoronto.ca.

Received March 6, 2007. Accepted May 14, 2007.


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