Age-related changes in behavioural and neural variability in a decision-making task
- Fenying Zang
- Anup Khanal
- Sonja Förster
- Larry Abbott
- Luigi Acerbi
- Valeria Aguillon-Rodriguez
- Mandana Ahmadi
- Jaweria Amjad
- Dora Angelaki
- Jaime Arlandis
- Zoe C. Ashwood
- Kush Banga
- Hailey Barrell
- Hannah M. Bayer
- Brandon Benson
- Julius Benson
- Jai Bhagat
- Dan Birman
- Niccolò Bonacchi
- Kcenia Bougrova
- Julien Boussard
- Sebastian A. Bruijns
- E. Kelly Buchanan
- Robert Campbell
- Matteo Carandini
- Joana A. Catarino
- Fanny Cazettes
- Gaelle A. Chapuis
- Davide Crombie
- Yang Dan
- Felicia Davatolhagh
- Peter Dayan
- Sophie Denève
- Eric EJ DeWitt
- Tatiana Engel
- Michele Fabbri
- Mayo Faulkner
- Robert Fetcho
- Ila Fiete
- Charles Findling
- Laura Freitas-Silva
- Surya Ganguli
- Berk Gerçek
- Naureen Ghani
- Ivan Gordeliy
- Laura M. Haetzel
- Kenneth D. Harris
- Michael Häusser
- Naoki Hiratani
- Sonja Hofer
2026-06-30
Age-related cognitive decline in learning and decision-making may arise from increased variability of neural responses. Here, we investigated how ageing affects behavioural and neural variability by recording >18,000 neurons across 16 brain regions (including cortex, hippocampus, thalamus, midbrain, and basal ganglia) in younger and older mice performing a visual decision-making task. Older mice showed more variable response times, reproducing a common finding in human ageing studies. Ageing globally increased firing rates and post-stimulus neural variability (quantified using the Fano factor), and decreased variability quenching–the reduction in neural variability upon stimulus presentation. Older animals showed higher overall firing rates across areas of visual and motor cortex, striatum, midbrain, and hippocampus, but lower firing rates in thalamic areas. Age-related attenuation in stimulus-induced variability quenching was most prominent in visual and motor cortex, striatum, and thalamic area. These findings show how large-scale neural recordings can help uncover regional specificity of ageing effects in single neurons, ultimately improving our understanding of the neural basis of age-related cognitive decline.