Emotional effect on older adults' speech act comprehension and its memorization: A neuroimaging study

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 25704009
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (A)
• Allocation Type: Partial Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Linguistics
• Research Institution: National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology
• Principal Investigator: Kiyama Sachiko 国立研究開発法人国立長寿医療研究センター, 健康長寿支援ロボットセンター, 研究員 (10612509)
• Project Period (FY): 2013-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 言語コミュニケーション / 感情語 / 加齢変化 / ポジティビティ効果 / fMRI / VBM / dmPFC / 灰白質

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Older adults experience memory decline thereby hampering fluent communication. To facilitate their memory performance, positive emotions have been shown to have a beneficial effect (the age-related positivity effect). However, the neural basis underlying this effect within the language domain remain unclear. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and voxel-based morphometry (VBM), this study assessed in what way age-related changes influence the role positive emotion plays during sentence processing. Results indicated that, in comparison with the younger counterparts, the older participants recruited broader regions including the putamen, the hippocampus, and the insula, for positive emotional sentences than neutral ones. VBM analysis found that the gray matter volume (GMV) in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) predicted the positivity effect during sentence retrieval. GMV in the dmPFC might underlien older adults’ retrieval of positive emotional sentence.

Free Research Field

神経言語学