In general, older adults seem to process information differently than younger people. When looking at pictures, a task that involves the back of the brain, where the visual cortex resides (top left), the pattern of activation in young adults is more focused on the right side, the side of the brain that processes visuo-spatial information. By contrast, the pattern in older adults is roughly the same in both the left and right sides of their visual cortex.
	When asked to keep a picture in their mind for four seconds (top, right, view of right hemisphere), young adults show a large focused activation in the frontal cortex (responsible for doing hard mental work), as well as a focused activation in the parietal area. Older adults show a smaller acti vation in the frontal cortex, and large, diffuse activations in the tempo rallparietal areas. Finally, when studying a picture to make an immediate judgment about it, young adults put the information into long-term storage, activating the hippocampus (bottom). Older adults do not seem to engage this site for a task that does not require long-term-memory processing.