TY - JOUR
T1 - Age-related decline in executive function as a hallmark of cognitive ageing in primates
T2 - An overview of cognitive and neurobiological studies: Aging of executive function in primates
AU - Lacreuse, Agnès
AU - Raz, Naftali
AU - Schmidtke, Daniel
AU - Hopkins, William D.
AU - Herndon, James G.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Author(s).
PY - 2020/11/1
Y1 - 2020/11/1
N2 - Executive function (EF) is a complex construct that reflects multiple higher-order cognitive processes such as planning, updating, inhibiting and set-shifting. Decline in these functions is a hallmark of cognitive ageing in humans, and age differences and changes in EF correlate with age-related differences and changes in association cortices, particularly the prefrontal areas. Here, we review evidence for age-related decline in EF and associated neurobiological changes in prosimians, New World and Old World monkeys, apes and humans. While EF declines with age in all primate species studied, the relationship of this decline with age-related alterations in the prefrontal cortex remains unclear, owing to the scarcity of neurobiological studies focusing on the ageing brain in most primate species. In addition, the influence of sex, vascular and metabolic risk, and hormonal status has rarely been considered. We outline several methodological limitations and challenges with the goal of producing a comprehensive integration of cognitive and neurobiological data across species and elucidating how ageing shapes neurocognitive trajectories in primates with different life histories, lifespans and brain architectures. Such comparative investigations are critical for fostering translational research and understanding healthy and pathological ageing in our own species. This article is part of the theme issue 'Evolution of the primate ageing process'.
AB - Executive function (EF) is a complex construct that reflects multiple higher-order cognitive processes such as planning, updating, inhibiting and set-shifting. Decline in these functions is a hallmark of cognitive ageing in humans, and age differences and changes in EF correlate with age-related differences and changes in association cortices, particularly the prefrontal areas. Here, we review evidence for age-related decline in EF and associated neurobiological changes in prosimians, New World and Old World monkeys, apes and humans. While EF declines with age in all primate species studied, the relationship of this decline with age-related alterations in the prefrontal cortex remains unclear, owing to the scarcity of neurobiological studies focusing on the ageing brain in most primate species. In addition, the influence of sex, vascular and metabolic risk, and hormonal status has rarely been considered. We outline several methodological limitations and challenges with the goal of producing a comprehensive integration of cognitive and neurobiological data across species and elucidating how ageing shapes neurocognitive trajectories in primates with different life histories, lifespans and brain architectures. Such comparative investigations are critical for fostering translational research and understanding healthy and pathological ageing in our own species. This article is part of the theme issue 'Evolution of the primate ageing process'.
KW - chimpanzee
KW - cognition
KW - grey mouse lemur
KW - macaque
KW - marmoset
KW - prefrontal cortex
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U2 - 10.1098/rstb.2019.0618
DO - 10.1098/rstb.2019.0618
M3 - Review article
C2 - 32951543
AN - SCOPUS:85091264568
SN - 0962-8436
VL - 375
JO - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
JF - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
IS - 1811
M1 - 20190618
ER -