% IMPORTANT: The following is UTF-8 encoded. This means that in the presence
% of non-ASCII characters, it will not work with BibTeX 0.99 or older.
% Instead, you should use an up-to-date BibTeX implementation like “bibtex8” or
% “biber”.
@ARTICLE{Segen:281783,
author = {Segen, Vladislava and Stangl, Matthias and Shine, Jonathan
and Wolbers, Thomas},
title = {{A}ltered {C}oding of {E}nvironmental {B}oundaries in
{H}uman {A}ging: {A}n f{MRI} {S}tudy},
journal = {Hippocampus},
volume = {35},
number = {6},
issn = {1050-9631},
address = {New York, NY [u.a.]},
publisher = {Wiley},
reportid = {DZNE-2025-01176},
pages = {e70044},
year = {2025},
abstract = {Aging is associated with changes in spatial memory and
navigation, yet the mechanisms underlying these changes are
not yet fully understood. Environmental boundaries are among
the most salient and reliable spatial cues, supporting both
spatial memory and orientation. Here, we investigated how
aging affects the use and the neural representation of
boundary information during a virtual object location memory
task. Healthy young and older adults navigated a square
virtual environment while undergoing functional magnetic
resonance imaging, allowing us to assess moment-to-moment
encoding of distance to environmental boundaries in the
entorhinal cortex and subiculum. Behaviorally, both age
groups showed more accurate memory for objects located near
boundaries, but this effect was amplified in older adults,
whose spatial precision declined more steeply with
increasing distance from boundaries. Older adults also
exhibited a stronger bias to recall objects closer to
boundaries. Analysis of navigation behavior revealed that
older adults followed boundary-oriented paths regardless of
target location, whereas young adults flexibly adapted their
navigation based on spatial context. Neurally, older
adults—but not young adults—showed significant
blood-oxygen-level-dependent modulation by boundary distance
in the entorhinal cortex and subiculum, with activity
decreasing as participants moved farther from boundaries.
This effect was most pronounced in low-performing older
adults and was associated with stronger behavioral boundary
bias, suggesting a maladaptive reliance on proximity-based
cues. Together, our results provide converging behavioral
and neural evidence that aging alters the use and
representation of boundary information, with downstream
effects on spatial memory. Altered boundary processing may
represent a key mechanism contributing to age-related
declines in spatial cognition.},
cin = {AG Wolbers},
ddc = {610},
cid = {I:(DE-2719)1310002},
pnm = {353 - Clinical and Health Care Research (POF4-353)},
pid = {G:(DE-HGF)POF4-353},
typ = {PUB:(DE-HGF)16},
doi = {10.1002/hipo.70044},
url = {https://pub.dzne.de/record/281783},
}