Skip Navigation



Cerebral Cortex Advance Access published online on March 23, 2007
Cerebral Cortex, doi:10.1093/cercor/bhm020
This Article
Right arrow Full Text Freely available
Right arrow FREE Full Text (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
17/12/2940    most recent
bhm020v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Bunzeck, N.
Right arrow Articles by Düzel, E.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Bunzeck, N.
Right arrow Articles by Düzel, E.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Mesolimbic Novelty Processing in Older Adults

Nico Bunzeck1, Hartmut Schütze2, Sabine Stallforth2, Jörn Kaufmann2, Sandra Düzel2, Hans-Jochen Heinze2 and Emrah Düzel1,2

1 Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Department of Psychology, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AR, UK, 2 Department of Neurology II and Centre for Advanced Imaging, Otto von Guericke University, Leipziger Strasse 44, 39120 Magdeburg, Germany

Address correspondence to Emrah Düzel, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Department of Psychology, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AR, UK. Email: e.duzel{at}ucl.ac.uk.

Normal aging is associated with neuronal loss in the dopaminergic midbrain (substantia nigra/ventral tegmental area, SN/VTA), a region that has recently been implicated in processing novel stimuli as part of a mesolimbic network including the hippocampus. Here, we quantified age-related structural degeneration of the mesolimbic system using magnetization transfer ratio (MTR) and correlated it with mesolimbic hemodynamic responses (HRs) to stimulus novelty. Twenty-one healthy older adults between 55 and 77 years performed a visual oddball paradigm allowing to distinguish mesolimbic HRs to novelty from rareness, negative emotional valence, and targetness using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The HRs in the right SN/VTA and the right hippocampus to novelty were positively correlated both with the SN/VTA MTR and hippocampus MTR but not amygdala MTR. However, the HR of the amygdala to negative emotional valence correlated with the amygdala MTR but not with the MTR in SN/VTA or the hippocampus. The results establish a structure–function relationship in support of a hippocampal-SN/VTA loop of mesolimbic novelty processing by showing that the hemodynamic activation in SN/VTA and hippocampus for novelty is selectively affected by age-related degeneration of these structures.

Key Words: fMRI • hippocampus • mesolimbic system • novelty • substantia nigra/VTA


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 ScienceHome page
K. D'Ardenne, S. M. McClure, L. E. Nystrom, and J. D. Cohen
BOLD Responses Reflecting Dopaminergic Signals in the Human Ventral Tegmental Area
Science, February 29, 2008; 319(5867): 1264 - 1267.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.