Cognitive decline in task switching may cause serious accidents especially in older adults. We evaluated the potential utility of a new task switching paradigm using color/shape and phone/letters to investigate the effect of aging on the brain activity using fMRI. Seventeen young and 15 older subjects participated in this study. Behavioral data analysis (ANOVA, p<0.05) revealed that the switching cost (SC) of color/shape paradigm was significantly higher than that of phone/letter paradigm in older adults, and the SC of older adults was also higher than that of young subjects in color/shape paradigm. The mixing cost (MC) of color/shape paradigm was significantly higher than that of phone/letter paradigm in both groups. Functional image analysis using SPM8 (p<0.001, uncorrected) revealed the significant activations in bilateral BA 32, 40 and 46 in both age group. Contrast result of two-sample T test for young minus older shows significant differences in the bilateral DLPFC including BA 46. These results suggested that the frontal-parietal network declines depending on aging. Focusing on these areas, this study might be useful for detecting the effects of aging on task switching function in the clinical setting.
