The blue spot is to blame
Scientists have found out why it is harder for people to concentrate with age
Natalia Pelezneva, Naked Science
Gerontologists have discovered a process that explains why it is more difficult for mature people to concentrate on work in stressful situations than for young people. This mechanism is associated with the work of the blue spot (locus coeruleus) — a region of the brain that is involved in the physiological response to stress and anxiety and helps to focus on the task. The study was published in the journal Nature Human Behavior (Lee et al., Arousal increases neural gain via the locus coeruleus–noradrenaline system in younger adults but not in older adults).
Drawing from the University of Southern California press release
Why people become more prone to distraction with age – VM.
The first group of participants in the experiments included 28 people aged 18 to 34 years, the second — 24 people 55-75 years. The volunteers were shown photos in pairs: one was a building, the other was a small object. In each pair, one photo was clear and highlighted, while the second remained blurry: the task was to quickly identify the highlighted image. Before some stages of the work, the participants were warned that at the end they might receive a weak shock with a stun gun, and in other cases they clarified that the blow did not threaten the volunteers.
During the experiment, the brain of the volunteers was examined by magnetic resonance imaging. The scientists also recorded the degree of emotional arousal of the participants by measuring the dilation of their pupils: they expanded significantly during the stages of the experiment, which could end with an electric shock.
The researchers observed how the parahippocampal place area (parahippocampal place area) behaves in the brains of volunteers. This region is activated when a person studies places suitable for living: for example, geographical maps or images of buildings. In the young participants of the experiment, the threat increased the activity of this zone at the sight of bright and clear photos of houses. When studying blurred images, the PPA remained passive, not "wedging" in the connection between the blue spot and the frontoparietal network of the brain responsible for directed attention. This allowed young people not to be distracted by unimportant information (blurry images).
In the volunteers from the older group, the activity of the frontoparietal network decreased in anticipation of shock, and the PPA remained active regardless of the type of images. Scientists have linked this to the age-related weakening of the blue spot: in people over 55, it no longer actively controlled the brain during stress, as in youth.
The results of the work will help in studies of the early stage of Alzheimer's disease. It is known that the blue spot is one of the first areas of the brain where neurofibrillary tangles, protein accumulations characteristic of this disease begin to appear.
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