Second, a smaller magnitude of activation occurs for older as compared with younger adults when performing cognitive 32 and visual 33 tasks.
First, cortical functions of older individuals may be too rigid to change due to reductions in grey matter volume 24, 25, 26, 27, 28 and thinning 27, 29, 30, 31. However, because of age-related cortical changes, it is unclear whether changes in V1 occur in older adults as a result of VPL. These activation/activity changes, in association with learning, have been largely linked to synaptic efficacy changes 10. Tuning properties of a trained feature based on action potentials of neurons in the localized region of V1 are changed 12, 23. Activation represented by blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signals is changed in association with VPL 13, 20, 21, 22. VPL with younger adults is strongly associated with changes in local networks in the early visual cortex 13, 20, 21, 22. Given these improvements, an important question is what is the underlying neural mechanism of VPL with older adults? This suggests that some visual functions that decline with age can be improved as a result of reorganization of networks in visual/brain processing. It has been recently shown that VPL is also possible with older individuals (age 65+) 18, 19. Such improvement is termed visual perceptual learning (VPL) 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and is regarded as a manifestation of reorganization of visual and brain networks central to processing the task.
Some visual tasks can be significantly improved by repeated practice. It is thought that such restoration is mainly due to reorganization of cortical areas 4, 5. However, many age-related declines in function can be, to some degree, restored with practice. Human brain processing declines with aging 1, 2, 3.
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