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

We used fMRI to explore brain activity in young and old adults,while they viewed and labeled faces expressing different emotionsas well as neutral expressions. Older adults had significantlygreater difficulty identifying expressions of sadness, angerand disgust than young adults. Both groups performed at ceilingfor happy expressions. The functional neuroimaging data revealedthat both young and old adults recruited a pattern of activitythat distinguished happy expressions from all other expressions,but the patterns were age-specific. Older adults showed increasedactivity in ventromedial prefrontal cortex, lingual gyrus andpremotor cortex for happy expressions, whereas younger adultsrecruited a more widely distributed set of regions includingthe amgydala, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, lateral prefrontalregions and bilateral inferior parietal and superior temporalareas. Conversely, younger adults showed more activity in thedorsal anterior cingulate for other types of expressions, andolder adults had more activity in dorsal cingulate, as wellas middle and inferior frontal gyri, somatosensory cortex, insulaand middle temporal regions. These results support previousresearch demonstrating age differences in brain activity duringemotional processing, and suggest possible age-related differencesin cognitive strategy during identification of happy faces,despite no effect of age on this ability.