Brain structures related to shifting between tasks or updating information about the environment show signs of deterioration in older adults as compared to younger adults.

As people age, structural brain changes influence their ability to adapt to the environment. New from eNeuro, Tatiana Wolfe and colleagues at the University of Arkansas characterized changes in the brain across two periods of adulthood that may correspond to changes in adaptive behavior. 

The researchers identified brain areas associated with the ability to adapt to the environment by analyzing previous neuroimaging studies. They then used a publicly accessible database—the Human Connectome Project—to identify different structures that enable these brain areas to communicate and work together to promote adaptive behavior. Structures related to shifting between tasks or updating information about the environment were more strongly linked to adaptive behaviors in older adults compared to younger adults. A separate imaging dataset from the UK Biobank revealed that biological features of these structures that older individuals rely more heavily upon deteriorated over time in a way that may be linked to deficits in behavioral adaptability that arise later in adulthood. 

According to the researchers, this work supports the idea that brain structures linked to the brain’s ability to adapt to the environment undergo age-related changes and point to potential measures for identifying these changes.