This chapter focuses primarily on recent advances in the functional neuroimaging of human cognition that have led toward a converging view that neural circuits involving prefrontal function and the related capacity for attentional control are key components of the developmental changes associated with normal aging. Along the way, this chapter discusses the neurocognitive correlates of attentional control, how aging affects these behavioral and neurological relationships, how these effects differ from those seen in age-associated pathology, how individuals vary in their susceptibility to such effects of aging, and what implications such individual differences hold for our understanding of the aging brain.
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