Locus coeruleus integrity in old age is selectively related to memories linked 
with salient negative events

Hämmerer, Dorothea; Callaghan, Martina F.; Hopkins, Alexandra; Kosciessa, Julian; Betts, Matthew; Cardenas-Blanco, Arturo; Kanowski, Martin; Weiskopf, Nikolaus; Dayan, Peter; Dolan, Raymond J.; Düzel, Emrah

doi:10.1073/pnas.1712268115

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Locus coeruleus integrity in old age is selectively related to memories linked with salient negative events

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Weiskopf, Nikolaus
Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, United Kingdom;
Department Neurophysics (Weiskopf), MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Max Planck Society;

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Citation

Hämmerer, D., Callaghan, M. F., Hopkins, A., Kosciessa, J., Betts, M., Cardenas-Blanco, A., et al. (2018). Locus coeruleus integrity in old age is selectively related to memories linked with salient negative events. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115(9), 2228-2233. doi:10.1073/pnas.1712268115.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0000-D069-F

Abstract

The locus coeruleus (LC) is the principal origin of noradrenaline in the brain. LC integrity varies considerably across healthy older individuals, and is suggested to contribute to altered cognitive functions in aging. Here we test this hypothesis using an incidental memory task that is known to be susceptible to noradrenergic modulation. We used MRI neuromelanin (NM) imaging to assess LC structural integrity and pupillometry as a putative index of LC activation in both younger and older adults. We show that older adults with reduced structural LC integrity show poorer subsequent memory. This effect is more pronounced for emotionally negative events, in accord with a greater role for noradrenergic modulation in encoding salient or aversive events. In addition, we found that salient stimuli led to greater pupil diameters, consistent with increased LC activation during the encoding of such events. Our study presents novel evidence that a decrement in noradrenergic modulation impacts on specific components of cognition in healthy older adults. The findings provide a strong motivation for further investigation of the effects of altered LC integrity in pathological aging.