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• Aging is associated with changes in sleep, cognitive function, and FNC. • We studied how sleep affects the link between FNC and cognition in the elderly. • sFNC and temporal variability of dFNC-var and dFNC-state were calculated. • Sleep modulated the association between dFNC and cognitive function. Aging is associated with changes in sleep, brain activity, and cognitive function, as well as the association among these factors; however, the precise nature of these changes has not been elucidated. This study systematically investigated the modulatory effect of sleep on the relationship between brain functional network connectivity (FNC) and cognitive function in older adults. In total, 107 community-dwelling healthy older adults were recruited and assigned into poor sleep and good sleep groups based on the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index. The static functional network connectivity (sFNC), the temporal variability of dynamic FNC (dFNC) from variance (dFNC-var), and the dFNC from clustering state (dFNC-state) were calculated. Corresponding cognition-predictive models were constructed for each sleep group. dFNC but not sFNC, was able to significantly predict the cognitive function in older adults. Specifically, sleep played a modulatory role in the association between dFNC and cognitive function, with sleep-specific variations at both microscopic (i.e., specific edges) and macroscopic levels (i.e., specific states) of dFNC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People employ automatic inferential processing when confronting pragmatically implied claims in advertising. However, whether comprehension and memorization of pragmatic implications differ between young and older adults is unclear. In the present study, we used eye-tracking technology to investigate online cognitive processes during reading of misleading advertisements. We found an interaction between age and advertising content, manifested as our older participants generated higher misleading rates in health-related than in health-irrelevant products, whereas this content-bias did not appear in their younger counterparts. Eye movement data further showed that the older adults spent more time processing critical claims for the health-related products than for the health-irrelevant products. Moreover, the correlations between fixation duration on pragmatic implications and misleading rates showed opposite trends in the two groups. The eye-tracking evidence novelly suggests that young and older adults may adopt different information processing strategies to comprehend pragmatic implications in advertising: More reading possibly enhances young adults' gist memory whereas it facilitates older adults' verbatim memory instead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The psychophysiological interaction analysis identified increased connection between VMPFC and DLPFC during risk taking. • Both young and older adults had the same winning model with the bidirectional connection between VMPFC and DLPFC. • Older adults exhibited up-regulation in several connections during risk taking compared with young counterparts. • Young adults' decision performance was negatively correlated with the modulation of DLPFC-to-VMPFC. • While older adults' decision performance was positively correlated with the modulation of AI-to-VMPFC. Previous studies have shown that aging is associated with changes in decision behavior. However, the neural mechanisms that underpin such age differences are inadequately understood. In this study, we aim to characterize the optimal neural model underlying a dynamic decision making task in both young and older adults, and further examine the age differences from the perspective of effective connectivity. Twenty-five young and 23 older adults performed a dynamic risk taking task, i.e., the balloon analogue risk task, in the functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner. The dynamic causal modeling analysis, with the coupling between the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and anterior insula (AI) that were identified in our task-related activation and psychophysiological interaction analysis, was performed to address the best fitting neural model and characterize age differences. Although both age groups adopted the same optimal model with bidirectional connection between the VMPFC and DLPFC, older adults exhibited up-regulation in several connections and among which the increased modulatory effect of AI-to-VMPFC subserving their decision quality. Our finding suggests that older adults might utilize different neural strategy via compensation to counteract the impact of advanced age in risk taking process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Lifelong learning facilitates active ageing, and intragenerational learning-the process by which older adults learn from their peers-is an effective means of achieving this goal. The present research aims to elucidate the mechanisms and differences between intergenerational and intragenerational learning models for older adults as evidenced by brain-to-brain synchrony., Methods: Fifty-six instructor-learner dyads completed a study comparing intergenerational and intragenerational learning models, as well as task difficulty. The study utilized a block puzzle task and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) for hyperscanning., Results: The instructor-learner dyads showed greater interpersonal neural synchrony (INS) and learning acquisition in the intragenerational learning model in the difficult task condition (t (54) = 3.49, p < 0.01), whereas the two learning models yielded similar results in the easy condition (t (54) = 1.96, p = 0.06). In addition, INS and self-efficacy mediated the association between learning models and learning acquisition in older adults (b = 0.14, SEM = 0.04, 95 % CI [0.01 0.16])., Discussion: This study is the first to provide evidence of interbrain synchrony in an investigation of the intragenerational learning model in older adults. Our findings suggest that intra-learning is as effective as traditional inter-learning and may be more effective in certain contexts, such as difficult tasks. Encouraging intra-learning in community service or educational activities can effectively mitigate the challenge of limited volunteers and enhance learning acquisition among older adults., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Inc.)