What mechanisms underlie declines in memory and other cognitive abilities as we age? Before functional neuroimaging, answers to this question relied primarily on behavioral measures despite aging’s obvious roots in biology. Functional imaging now permits a glimpse of the biological underpinnings of cognition, and recent discoveries offer new insights into how brain function differs in older age. Focusing primarily on studies of working memory, I discuss how neuroimaging provides converging evidence to support and clarify mechanistic accounts of cognitive aging, and how imaging can guide the development of cognitive interventions. These methods promise to adjudicate between hypothesized mechanisms of age differences, and they are generating new, testable hypotheses to elucidate cognitive decline, cognitive stability, and plasticity in older age.
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