PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Kosciessa, Julian Q.
AU  - Mayr, Ulrich
AU  - Lindenberger, Ulman
AU  - Garrett, Douglas D.
TI  - Broadscale dampening of uncertainty adjustment in the aging brain
AID  - 10.1101/2023.07.14.549093
DP  - 2024 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2023.07.14.549093
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2024/10/18/2023.07.14.549093.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2024/10/18/2023.07.14.549093.full
AB  - The ability to prioritize among input features according to relevance enables adaptive behaviors across the human lifespan. However, relevance often remains ambiguous, and such uncertainty increases demands for dynamic control. While both cognitive stability and flexibility decline during healthy ageing, it is unknown whether aging alters how uncertainty impacts perception and decision-making, and if so, via which neural mechanisms. Here, we assess uncertainty adjustment across the adult lifespan (N = 100; cross-sectional) via behavioral modelling and a theoretically informed set of EEG-, fMRI-, and pupil-based signatures. On the group level, older adults show a broad dampening of uncertainty adjustment relative to younger adults. At the individual level, older individuals with more young-like neural responses also showed better maintained cognitive control. Our results highlight neural mechanisms whose maintenance plausibly enables flexible task-set, perception, and decision computations across the adult lifespan.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.