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Memory for Category Exemplars and Hippocampal Connectivity in Aging

Poster Session B - Sunday, March 8, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Shijing Zhou¹ (), Troy Houser, Caitlin R. Bowman², Dagmar Zeithamova; ¹University of Oregon, ²University of Wisconsin Milwaukee

Aging is often associated with changes in cognition and changes in brain connectivity. Here we asked how anterior and posterior hippocampus connectivity with large-scale brain networks changes with age, and how it relates to different memory functions. Young and older participants completed category learning, recognition and categorization test with novel stimuli, providing behavioral measures of category learning and exemplar memorization. Background functional connectivity was recorded during categorization in fMRI scanner. We found that age-related differences in hippocampal connectivity were regionally and network-specific. In anterior hippocampus, young adults showed greater connectivity to default mode and limbic networks, while older adults showed greater connectivity with control, ventral attention, and dorsal attention networks. Posterior hippocampus showed fewer age-related connectivity differences, with younger adults demonstrating greater connectivity with limbic and visual networks. Greater anterior hippocampal connectivity to default network was associated with better exemplar memorization in both age groups. In older adults, exemplar memorization was also positively correlated with anterior hippocampal connectivity to dorsal attention network, and less strongly the control network, both of which showed increased rather than decreased hippocampal interactions in aging. This pattern of results suggests that anterior hippocampal connectivity to control and dorsal attention networks in older adult might be compensatory for the decreased connectivity to other networks and highlights the nuanced age-related changes in hippocampal connectivity and cognition.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Development & aging