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Neural activation mediates age-related differences in cognition across memory domains

Poster Session C - Sunday, March 8, 2026, 5:00 – 7:00 pm PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballrooms

Xiaoxiao Sun^1,2 (xiaoxiao.sun@columbia.edu), Xiaoyu Ye¹, Kavya Jhaveri¹, Zhiyu Sun¹, Leila Simani², Paul Sajda^1,2, Victoria M. Leavitt²; ¹Columbia University, ²Columbia University Irving Medical Center

Age-related cognitive decline is often assumed to reflect a direct effect of chronological aging on behavior. However, behavioral performance across adulthood is highly variable, suggesting that age influences cognition primarily through changes in brain function. Here, we test a brain-first model of cognitive aging by examining whether neural activation mediates the relationship between age and performance across distinct memory domains. We first analyzed behavioral and EEG data from an adult lifespan cohort performing a visuospatial item-location recall task (n = 31). Chronological age showed weak and inconsistent associations with task performance, explaining limited variance in accuracy. In contrast, we found that age robustly predicted multiple neural activation metrics, including event-related potentials (ERP) and phase-locking value (PLV). Importantly, these neural measures had systematic age-related modulation and were strongly associated with behavioral performance, substantially outperforming chronological age as predictors of cognitive outcomes. To assess the generalizability of this pattern, we examined an open-access EEG dataset in which participants performed a Sternberg working memory task (n = 21). Despite differences in task demands, age-related neural modulation converged on the same ERP and PLV signatures observed in the visuospatial task. Overall, these results support a mediation framework in which age-related cognitive differences arise indirectly through alterations in common neural mechanisms of activation. By identifying shared neural patterns across memory domains, this study reveals a memory-domain-general pathway of functional brain aging and highlights neural activation as a proximal and potentially modifiable mechanism underlying cognitive aging.

Topic Area: EXECUTIVE PROCESSES: Working memory