. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 Feb 1.

Published in final edited form as: Am Psychol. 2011 Jul 25;67(2):87–100. doi: 10.1037/a0024657

Table 4.

Overactivation Patterns of Activity in Senior Participants Reflect Compensatory Processing

First author (year)	N_C	N_E	Age	Tasks	Results
Morcom (2003)	14	14	63–74	Memory	Successful encoding: activates left prefrontal cortex in the young but homologous left and right prefrontal cortex in seniors
Cabeza (2004)	20	20	70 (M)	Working memory and attention	In both tasks: seniors showed greater bilateral prefrontal cortex activity than young (compensation), and seniors showed less occipital activity than young (sensory decline)
Rossi (2004)	37	29	50–80	Memory	↓ memory retrieval in seniors with disruptive TMS at the left or right prefrontal cortex and ↓ memory retrieval in the young with disruptive TMS only at the right prefrontal cortex
Solé-Padulles (2006)	19	20	67 (M)^a	Memory	Pre–activating TMS: unilateral activity. Post–activating TMS: ↑ bilateral activity and ↑ memory

Note. Age is given in years. Due to the complexity and descriptive nature of these effects, effects sizes are not reported.

N_C = sample size of the control group; N_E = sample size of the experimental/senior group; TMS = transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Participants demonstrated low memory scores at pretesting.