Normal Aging of the Attentional Control Functions That Underlie Working Memory

BackgroundPatients with major depressive disorder (MDD) show deficits in processing of facial emotions that persist beyond recovery and cessation of treatment. Abnormalities in neural areas supporting attentional control and emotion processing in remitted depressed (rMDD) patients suggests that there may be enduring, trait-like abnormalities in key neural circuits at the interface of cognition and emotion, but this issue has not been studied systematically.MethodNineteen euthymic, medication-free rMDD patients (mean age 33.6 years; mean duration of illness 34 months) and 20 age- and gender-matched healthy controls (HC; mean age 35.8 years) performed the Emotional Face N-Back (EFNBACK) task, a working memory task with emotional distracter stimuli. We used blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure neural activity in the dorsolateral (DLPFC) and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), ventral striatum and amygdala, using a region of interest (ROI) approach in SPM2.ResultsrMDD patients exhibited significantly greater activity relative to HC in the left DLPFC [Brodmann area (BA) 9/46] in response to negative emotional distracters during high working memory load. By contrast, rMDD patients exhibited significantly lower activity in the right DLPFC and left VLPFC compared to HC in response to positive emotional distracters during high working memory load. These effects occurred during accurate task performance.ConclusionsRemitted depressed patients may continue to exhibit attentional biases toward negative emotional information, reflected by greater recruitment of prefrontal regions implicated in attentional control in the context of negative emotional information.

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Contributions of Brain Function and Structure to Three Different Domains of Cognitive Control in Normal Aging

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience ◽

10.1162/jocn_a_01685 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-22

Author(s):

Jenny R. Rieck ◽

Giulia Baracchini ◽

Cheryl L. Grady

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Cognitive Control ◽

Task Performance ◽

Brain Structure ◽

Functional Activity ◽

Brain Activity ◽

Diffusion Imaging ◽

Normal Aging ◽

Control Mechanisms ◽

And Task

Cognitive control involves the flexible allocation of mental resources during goal-directed behavior and comprises three correlated but distinct domains—inhibition, shifting, and working memory. The work of Don Stuss and others has demonstrated that frontal and parietal cortices are crucial to cognitive control, particularly in normal aging, which is characterized by reduced control mechanisms. However, the structure–function relationships specific to each domain and subsequent impact on performance are not well understood. In the current study, we examined both age and individual differences in functional activity associated with core domains of cognitive control in relation to fronto-parietal structure and task performance. Participants ( N = 140, aged 20–86 years) completed three fMRI tasks: go/no-go (inhibition), task switching (shifting), and n-back (working memory), in addition to structural and diffusion imaging. All three tasks engaged a common set of fronto-parietal regions; however, the contributions of age, brain structure, and task performance to functional activity were unique to each domain. Aging was associated with differences in functional activity for all tasks, largely in regions outside common fronto-parietal control regions. Shifting and inhibition showed greater contributions of structure to overall decreases in brain activity, suggesting that more intact fronto-parietal structure may serve as a scaffold for efficient functional response. Working memory showed no contribution of structure to functional activity but had strong effects of age and task performance. Together, these results provide a comprehensive and novel examination of the joint contributions of aging, performance, and brain structure to functional activity across multiple domains of cognitive control.

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Fear not! Anxiety biases attentional enhancement of threat without impairing working memory filtering

10.31234/osf.io/rn4fa ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Christine Salahub ◽

Stephen Emrich

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Visual Working Memory ◽

State Anxiety ◽

Attentional Control ◽

Event Related Potentials ◽

Memory Storage ◽

Attentional Biases ◽

Related Potentials ◽

Filtering Efficiency ◽

Memory Resources

Individuals with anxiety have attentional biases toward threat-related distractors. This deficit in attentional control has been shown to impact visual working memory (VWM) filtering efficiency, as anxious individuals inappropriately store threatening distractors in VWM. It remains unclear, however, whether this mis-allocation of memory resources is due to inappropriate attentional enhancement of threatening distractors, or to a failure in suppression. Here, we used a systematically lateralized VWM task with fearful and neutral faces to examine event-related potentials related to attentional selection (N2pc), suppression (PD), and working memory maintenance (CDA). We found that state anxiety correlated with attentional enhancement of threat-related distractors, such that more anxious individuals had larger N2pc amplitudes toward fearful distractors than neutral distractors. However, there was no correlation between anxiety and memory storage of fearful distractors (CDA). These findings demonstrate that anxiety biases attention toward fearful distractors, but that this bias does not always guarantee increased memory storage of threat-related distractors.

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Chronic Intake of Wild Blueberry Extract and Powder Maintains Episodic‐Like and Working Memory During Normal Aging in Mice

The FASEB Journal ◽

10.1096/fasebj.29.1_supplement.608.33 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 29 (S1) ◽

Author(s):

Emilie Fromentin ◽

Ali Krazem ◽

Nadia Henkouss ◽

Marc Roller ◽

Daniel Beracochea

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Normal Aging ◽

Wild Blueberry

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Working Memory and Executive Function Decline across Normal Aging, Mild Cognitive Impairment, and Alzheimer’s Disease

BioMed Research International ◽

10.1155/2015/748212 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 2015 ◽

pp. 1-9 ◽

Cited By ~ 137

Author(s):

Anna-Mariya Kirova ◽

Rebecca B. Bays ◽

Sarita Lagalwar

Keyword(s):

Alzheimer’S Disease ◽

Alzheimer's Disease ◽

Working Memory ◽

Cognitive Impairment ◽

Executive Function ◽

Mild Cognitive Impairment ◽

Executive Dysfunction ◽

Normal Aging ◽

Future Research ◽

Neurological Differences

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease marked by deficits in episodic memory, working memory (WM), and executive function. Examples of executive dysfunction in AD include poor selective and divided attention, failed inhibition of interfering stimuli, and poor manipulation skills. Although episodic deficits during disease progression have been widely studied and are the benchmark of a probable AD diagnosis, more recent research has investigated WM and executive function decline during mild cognitive impairment (MCI), also referred to as the preclinical stage of AD. MCI is a critical period during which cognitive restructuring and neuroplasticity such as compensation still occur; therefore, cognitive therapies could have a beneficial effect on decreasing the likelihood of AD progression during MCI. Monitoring performance on working memory and executive function tasks to track cognitive function may signal progression from normal cognition to MCI to AD. The present review tracks WM decline through normal aging, MCI, and AD to highlight the behavioral and neurological differences that distinguish these three stages in an effort to guide future research on MCI diagnosis, cognitive therapy, and AD prevention.

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Working Memory and Attentional Control: Anik de Ribaupierre

Control of Human Behavior, Mental Processes, and Consciousness ◽

10.4324/9781410605412-18 ◽

2013 ◽

pp. 137-153

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Attentional Control

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Attentional Fluctuations, Cognitive Flexibility, and Bilingualism in Kindergarteners

Behavioral Sciences ◽

10.3390/bs9050058 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 9 (5) ◽

pp. 58 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Stephanie L. Haft ◽

Olga Kepinska ◽

Jocelyn N. Caballero ◽

Manuel Carreiras ◽

Fumiko Hoeft

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Cognitive Flexibility ◽

Attentional Control ◽

Kindergarten Children ◽

Prior Work ◽

Bilingual Advantage ◽

Memory And Attention ◽

Confounding Variables ◽

Prior Literature ◽

The Relationship

The idea of a bilingual advantage in aspects of cognitive control—including cognitive flexibility, inhibition, working memory, and attention—is disputed. Using a sample of kindergarten children, the present study investigated associations between bilingualism and cognitive flexibility—a relationship that has shown mixed findings in prior literature. We also extend prior work by exploring relationships between bilingualism and attentional fluctuations, which represent consistency in attentional control and contribute to cognitive performance. To our knowledge, no previous study has explored this association. Theoretically, attentional fluctuations might mediate or moderate the relationship between bilingualism and cognitive flexibility. However, given evidence of null findings from extant literature when confounding variables are adequately controlled and tasks are standardized, we did not expect to find a bilingual advantage in either cognitive flexibility or attentional fluctuations. Our results supported this hypothesis when considering bilingualism both continuously and categorically. The importance of expanding upon mechanistic accounts connecting bilingualism to cognitive improvements is discussed.

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