RESUMO
Environmental factors contribute to the constitution and maintenance of the cognitive reserve and partially explain the variability of cognitive performance in older individuals. We assessed the role of leisure activities - social and individual - on the access to lexico-semantic representations evaluated through a task of object naming (ON). We hypothesize that compared to individual, social leisure activities explain better the ON performance in the older adults, which is explained by a mechanism of neural reserve. Our results in older adults indicate (a) a significant correlation between leisure social activities and the response time for ON, (b) a significant correlation between link the neural activity of the left superior and medial frontal (SmFG) for ON and leisure social activities. Interestingly, the activity of the left SmFG partially mediates the relationship between social activities and OD performance. We suggest that social leisure activities may contribute to maintain ON performances in healthy aging, through a neural reserve mechanism, in relation with left SmFG activity. This region is typically involved in the access to semantic representations, guided by the emotional state. These results open interesting perspectives on the role of social leisure activities on lexical production during aging.