Neural correlates of successful relational memory in younger and older adults: An activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis

Abstract

Relational memory, the ability to encode and retrieve associations among multiple elements of an experience, is a core component of episodic memory that shows disproportionate age-related decline. Despite a substantial neuroimaging literature examining relational memory in aging, findings remain heterogeneous, and no quantitative synthesis has been conducted. The present study addressed this gap using Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) meta-analyses to characterize the neural correlates of relational memory success during encoding and retrieval in younger and older adults. Separate within-age-group, conjunction, and subtraction analyses were conducted, along with an exploratory analysis examining a general relational memory network across 70 independent studies. During encoding, younger adults showed robust convergence across medial temporal and prefrontal regions, whereas older adults showed more limited convergence. Shared convergence across age groups was observed in the left hippocampus and right inferior temporal gyrus, and direct age-group contrasts revealed greater prefrontal convergence in younger relative to older adults. During retrieval, younger adults showed convergence in posterior default mode and subcortical regions, whereas older adults showed convergence in the left angular gyrus, with no shared convergence observed across age groups. Across all studies, the hippocampus showed the most robust bilateral convergence across age groups and memory phases, underscoring its critical role in relational binding. Together, these findings provide the first quantitative characterization of the neural correlates of relational memory success in aging and highlight stable hippocampal involvement alongside age-related variability in prefrontal and posterior retrieval-related recruitment.