Language and cognition in aging brains

How do our cognitive capacities and our neural infrastructure change with age and experience? On the one hand, our brains, similar to other organs, show signs of wear as we get older; on the other hand, we continue to learn things as we age, so we may also become wiser and more knowledgeable about the world. With respect to language, older adults may have difficulty retrieving certain words or names, but their vocabulary keeps growing and their language comprehension ability keeps improving. In this line of work (in collaboration with Swathi Kiran), we are investigating how the language network and other brain networks change as we age.