Neural oscillatory responses to angry and neutral expressions become weaker with aging in face-sensitive regions

Emotion processing remains relatively intact throughout life, seemingly becoming more positive with age. Facial expressions reflect different emotions and involve distinct oscillatory responses, but whether aging affects these remains unclear. Using magnetoencephalography, we examined the neural dynamics underlying angry, happy, and neutral expression processing in 152 healthy adults (21-87 years).

Whole-brain linear mixed-effects analyses revealed that theta responses to angry expressions became weaker with age in the left superior temporal sulcus (STS), inferior temporal, supramarginal, and right cerebellum. Conversely, alpha oscillations in the STS and gamma in the temporal pole became weaker with age during neutral expressions, while posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) beta strengthened with age during all expressions, with the strongest relationship for happy faces. Finally, stress and depression indices scaled with activity in the STS, temporal pole, and PCC.

These findings suggest that adults become less stressed and attend less to negative and ambiguous stimuli with increasing age. This study was supported by the National Institutes of Health through grants R01-DA056223 (T.W.W.), R01-NS141729 (T.W.W.), R01-DA059542 (T.W.W.), R01-MH116782 (T.W.W.), S10-OD028751 (T.W.W.), P20-GM144641 (T.W.W.), and F31-DA063403 (K.M.M.). The funders had no role in the study design, collection, analysis, or interpretation of data, nor did they influence writing the report or the decision to submit this work for publication.

We would like to thank the volunteers for participating in the study, as well as our staff and collaborators for their contributions. Institute for Human Neuroscience, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Omaha, NE, USA Kalyn A. Coutant, Ryan Glesinger, Grant M.

Spooner, Giorgia Picci & Tony W. Wilson Department of Pharmacology and Neuroscience, Creighton University School of Medicine, Omaha, NE, USA Kalyn A. Wilson The authors declare no competing interests.

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