Frontal structural integrity and increased frontoparietal rs-connectivity are associated with financial ability in middle-aged and older adults

Poster Session D - Monday, April 15, 2024, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Sheraton Hall ABC

Dr Ian McDonough¹ (imcdonough@binghamton.edu), Macarena Suárez-Pellicioni²; ¹Binghamton University, ²The University of Alabama

Appropriately managing finances is an important part of daily living. Financial ability deficits increase one’s susceptibility to financial scams and exploitation and rapid declines in these abilities have been proposed as an early sign of dementia. Most of the research on financial ability has focused on the default mode network and Alzheimer’s disease. The present study investigated the neural basis of financial ability in cognitively normal middle-aged and older adults by focusing on the role of structural integrity and resting-state functional connectivity in brain regions responsible for numeric processing and the extent to which these relationships predicted one’s risk for dementia—a sum score of well-validated risks. Adults aged 50-74 (N=67) completed a financial ability task (e.g., counting money, making change) outside the scanner. Partial least squares regression was used to test the relationship between financial ability and brain metrics. The mediating role of language, reasoning, memory, speed, and executive functions also was explored. Better financial ability was associated with structural integrity of the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), with increased connectivity between the bilateral IFG and the left parietal cortex, and with decreased connectivity between the right middle frontal gyrus and the left parietal cortex. Reasoning, executive function, and language composites mediated multiple relationships between brain metrics and financial ability. None of the brain measures were related to dementia risk. The findings provide a new perspective on the role of numeric processing brain regions in explaining financial ability among middle-aged and older adults free of dementia.

Topic Area: THINKING: Development & aging