Distractions 'hit old-age memory'

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Mental slowing down in old age can be blamed partly on being more easily distracted, research suggests, according to Internet.
The Canadian team asked young and old people to attempt a memory test while in a scanner showing which bits of their brain were working. The older subjects did worse at the tests, and their brains responded more to the background buzzing and banging from the scanner itself.
Researchers have suggested that mental decline may be due to a decreasing ability to "tune out" irrelevant information from their senses.
This has been shown for both sound and vision, where older subjects were more likely to focus on the landscape in a picture rather than the figure within it.
The University of Toronto study used a standard face recognition test, placing 12 old and 12 young volunteers within a "functional MRI" scanner, which allows scientists to see which parts of the brains are activated during a particular activity.
Of prime interest was activity in the hippocampus, and area of the brain known to be involved with the laying down of memories.
When both the old and young volunteers failed to remember a face, there was less activity in the hippocampus, as might be expected.
However, when the older subjects failed, there was also increased activity in two other parts of the brain, the auditory cortex and the pre-frontal cortex, which are responsible for processing signals from the external environment.