scholarly journals A Neural Signature of Regularity in Sound is Reduced in Older Adults

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Björn Herrmann ◽  
Burkhard Maess ◽  
Ingrid S. Johnsrude
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Auditory Cortex ◽  
Older Individuals ◽  
Sound Perception ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Sound Processing ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Increased Sensitivity ◽  
Neural Signature ◽  
Age Related Changes

AbstractSensitivity to repetitions in sound amplitude and frequency is crucial for sound perception. As with other aspects of sound processing, sensitivity to such patterns may change with age, and may help explain some age-related changes in hearing such as segregating speech from background sound. We recorded magnetoencephalography to characterize differences in the processing of sound patterns between younger and older adults. We presented tone sequences that either contained a pattern (made of a repeated set of tones) or did not contain a pattern. We show that auditory cortex in older, compared to younger, adults is hyperresponsive to sound onsets, but that sustained neural activity in auditory cortex, indexing the processing of a sound pattern, is reduced. Hence, the sensitivity of neural populations in auditory cortex fundamentally differs between younger and older individuals, overresponding to sound onsets, while underresponding to patterns in sounds. This may help to explain some age-related changes in hearing such as increased sensitivity to distracting sounds and difficulties tracking speech in the presence of other sound.

scholarly journals When the “Golden Years” turn blue

2016 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer S. Green ◽  
Joshua C. Magee ◽  
Amanda R.W. Steiner ◽  
Bethany A. Teachman
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Clinical Practice ◽  
Healthy Aging ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Anxiety And Depression ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Pathological Anxiety ◽  
Age Related Changes

Current treatments for disorders of emotion, such as pathological anxiety, are often less effective in older adults than in younger adults and have poorly understood mechanisms, pointing to the need for psychopathology models that better account for age-related changes in normative emotional functioning and the expression of disordered emotion. This article describes ways in which the healthy aging and emotion literature can enhance understanding and treatment of symptoms of anxiety and depression in later life. We offer recommendations on how to integrate the theories and findings of healthy aging literature with psychopathology research and clinical practice and highlight opportunities for future research.

scholarly journals Effect of Speaker Age on Speech Recognition and Perceived Listening Effort in Older Adults With Hearing Loss

2012 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 838-847 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan J. McAuliffe ◽  
Phillipa J. Wilding ◽  
Natalie A. Rickard ◽  
Greg A. O'Beirne
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Speech Recognition ◽  
Signal Quality ◽  
Older Individuals ◽  
Listening Effort ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Perceived Effort ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Significant Difference

Purpose Older adults exhibit difficulty understanding speech that has been experimentally degraded. Age-related changes to the speech mechanism lead to natural degradations in signal quality. We tested the hypothesis that older adults with hearing loss would exhibit declines in speech recognition when listening to the speech of older adults, compared with the speech of younger adults, and would report greater amounts of listening effort in this task. Method Nineteen individuals with age-related hearing loss completed speech recognition and listening effort scaling tasks. Both were conducted in quiet, when listening to high- and low-predictability phrases produced by younger and older speakers, respectively. Results No significant difference in speech recognition existed when stimuli were derived from younger or older speakers. However, perceived effort was significantly higher when listening to speech from older adults, as compared with younger adults. Conclusions For older individuals with hearing loss, natural degradations in signal quality may require greater listening effort. However, they do not interfere with speech recognition—at least in quiet. Follow-up investigation of the effect of speaker age on speech recognition and listening effort under more challenging noise conditions appears warranted.

scholarly journals Catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) Genotype Affects Age-Related Changes in Plasticity in Working Memory: A Pilot Study

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Heinzel ◽  
Thomas G. Riemer ◽  
Stefanie Schulte ◽  
Johanna Onken ◽  
Andreas Heinz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Genetic Variation ◽  
Behavioral Plasticity ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Dopamine Metabolism ◽  
Comt Genotype ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Age Related Changes

Objectives. Recent work suggests that a genetic variation associated with increased dopamine metabolism in the prefrontal cortex (catechol-O-methyltransferase Val158Met; COMT) amplifies age-related changes in working memory performance. Research on younger adults indicates that the influence of dopamine-related genetic polymorphisms on working memory performance increases when testing the cognitive limits through training. To date, this has not been studied in older adults.Method. Here we investigate the effect of COMT genotype on plasticity in working memory in a sample of 14 younger (aged 24–30 years) and 25 older (aged 60–75 years) healthy adults. Participants underwent adaptive training in then-back working memory task over 12 sessions under increasing difficulty conditions.Results. Both younger and older adults exhibited sizeable behavioral plasticity through training (P<.001), which was larger in younger as compared to older adults (P<.001). Age-related differences were qualified by an interaction with COMT genotype (P<.001), and this interaction was due to decreased behavioral plasticity in older adults carrying the Val/Val genotype, while there was no effect of genotype in younger adults.Discussion. Our findings indicate that age-related changes in plasticity in working memory are critically affected by genetic variation in prefrontal dopamine metabolism.

scholarly journals EXPRESS: Age-related changes in time perception: The impact of naturalistic environments and retrospective judgments on timing performance

2021 ◽  
pp. 174702182110233
Author(s):  
Martin Riemer ◽  
Thomas Wolbers ◽  
Hedderik van Rijn
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Cognitive Decline ◽  
Time Perception ◽  
Ecological Validity ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Reduced Complexity ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Age Related Changes

Reduced timing abilities have been reported in older adults and are associated with pathological cognitive decline. However, time perception experiments often lack ecological validity. Especially the reduced complexity of experimental stimuli and the participants’ awareness of the time-related nature of the task can influence lab-assessed timing performance and thereby conceal age-related differences. An approximation of more naturalistic paradigms can provide important information about age-related changes in timing abilities. To determine the impact of higher ecological validity on timing experiments, we implemented a paradigm that allowed us to test (i) the effect of embedding the to-be-timed stimuli within a naturalistic visual scene, and (ii) the effect of retrospective time judgments, which are more common in real life than prospective judgments. The results show that, compared to out-of-context stimuli, younger adults benefit from a naturalistic embedding of stimuli (reflected in higher precision and less errors), whereas the performance of older adults is reduced when confronted with naturalistic stimuli. Differences between retrospective and prospective time judgments were not modulated by age. We conclude that, potentially driven by difficulties in suppressing temporally irrelevant environmental information, the contextual embedding of naturalistic stimuli can affect the degree to which age influences the performance in time perception tasks.

scholarly journals Effect of Cognitive Control on Attentional Processing of Emotional Information Among Older Adults: Evidence From an Eye-Tracking Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haining Liu ◽  
Haihong Liu ◽  
Feng Li ◽  
Buxin Han ◽  
Cuili Wang
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Healthy Aging ◽  
Older Individuals ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Spatial Cueing ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Cueing Task ◽  
Engagement And Disengagement

Background: Although numerous studies have suggested that the gradually increasing selective preference for positive information over negative information in older adults depends on cognitive control processes, few have reported the characteristics of different attention stages in the emotional processing of older individuals. The present study used a real-time eye-tracking technique to disentangle the attentional engagement and disengagement processes involved in age-related positivity effect (PE).Methods: Eye movement data from a spatial-cueing task were obtained for 32 older and 32 younger healthy participants. The spatial-cueing task with varied cognitive loads appeared to be an effective way to explore the role of cognitive control during the attention engagement and disengagement stages of emotion processing.Results: Compared with younger adults, older participants showed more positive gaze preferences when cognitive resources were sufficient for face processing at the attention engagement stage. However, the age-related PE was not observed at the attention disengagement stage because older adults had more difficulty disengaging from fearful faces than did the younger adults due to the consumption of attention by the explicit target judgment.Conclusion: The present study highlights how cognitive control moderates positive gaze preferences at different attention processing stages. These findings may have far-reaching implications for understanding, preventing, and intervening in unsuccessful aging and, thus, in promoting active and healthy aging.

scholarly journals Cortical Responses to the Amplitude Envelopes of Sounds Change with Age

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanessa C. Irsik ◽  
Ala Almanaseer ◽  
Ingrid S. Johnsrude ◽  
Björn Herrmann
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Auditory Cortex ◽  
Cortical Excitability ◽  
Neural Synchronization ◽  
Speech In Noise ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Cortical Responses ◽  
Sound Features ◽  
Experience Difficulty ◽  
Age Related Changes

AbstractMany older listeners have difficulty understanding speech in noise, when cues to speech-sound identity are less redundant. The amplitude envelope of speech fluctuates dramatically over time, and features such as the rate of amplitude change at onsets (attack) and offsets (decay) signal critical information about the identity of speech sounds. Aging is also thought to be accompanied by increases in cortical excitability, which may differentially alter sensitivity to envelope dynamics. Here, we recorded electroencephalography in younger and older human adults (of both sexes) to investigate how aging affects neural synchronization to 4-Hz amplitude-modulated noises with different envelope shapes (ramped: slow attack & sharp decay; damped: sharp attack & slow decay). We observed that subcortical responses did not differ between age groups, whereas older compared to younger adults exhibited larger cortical responses to sound onsets, consistent with an increase in auditory cortical excitability. Older adults showed increased neural synchronization when the envelope shape was damped compared to ramped, whereas younger participants showed the opposite pattern. Furthermore, the response shape of synchronized neural activity was more sinusoidal in younger individuals, whereas synchronized activity in older adults was less sinusoidal and more peaked. The current results suggest that age-related changes in the excitability of auditory cortex alter responses to envelope dynamics, and this may be part of the reason why older adults experience difficulty understanding speech in noise.Significance StatementMany adults above age 50 report difficulty understanding speech when there is background noise, which can trigger social withdrawal and negative psychosocial health outcomes. The difficulty may be related to age-related changes in how the brain processes temporal sound features. We tested younger and older people on their sensitivity to different envelope shapes, using EEG. Our results demonstrate that aging is associated with heightened sensitivity to sounds with a sharp attack and gradual decay, and sharper neural responses that deviate from the sinusoidal features of the stimulus, perhaps reflecting increased excitability in the aged auditory cortex. Altered responses to temporal sound features may be part of the reason why older adults often experience difficulty understanding speech in social situations.

scholarly journals Age-related Changes in Ongoing Thought Relate to External Context and Individual Cognition

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 967-967
Author(s):  
Adam Turnbull ◽  
Giulia Poerio ◽  
Feng Lin ◽  
Jonathan Smallwood
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Cognitive Aging ◽  
Experience Sampling ◽  
Principal Component ◽  
Lifestyle Changes ◽  
Aging Research ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Age Related Changes

Abstract Understanding how age-related changes in cognition manifest in the real world is an important goal for aging research. One means of capturing these changes involves “experience sampling” participant’s self-reported thoughts as they go about their daily lives. Previous research using this method has shown age-related changes in ongoing thought: e.g., older adults have fewer thoughts unrelated to the here-and-now. However, it is currently unclear how these changes reflect cognitive aging or lifestyle changes. 78 younger adults and 35 older adults rated their thought contents along 20 dimensions and the difficulty of their current activity in their daily lives. They also performed cognitive tasks in the laboratory. In a set of exploratory analyses using Principal Component Analysis (PCA), we found that older adults spent more time thinking positive, wanted thoughts, particularly in demanding contexts, suggesting they may use different strategies to regulate their emotions. In line with previous research, older adults spent less time mind wandering about their future selves. Past-related thought related to episodic memory differently in older and younger adults. Additionally, PCA analyses performed separately in older and younger adults showed high similarity to an analysis performed on the combined sample, suggesting a similar structure to ongoing daily life thought in older and younger adults. These findings inform the use of experience sampling to understand cognitive aging, highlighting the need to consider content along multiple dimensions as well as the context in which thoughts are reported when analyzing aging ongoing thought.

scholarly journals Age-related Changes in Memory for Object and Position-In-Context

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tammy Tran ◽  
Kaitlyn E. Tobin ◽  
Sophia H. Block ◽  
Vyash Puliyadi ◽  
Michela Gallagher ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Spatial Context ◽  
Complex Environments ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Healthy Older Adults ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Age Related Changes

AbstractThere has been considerable focus on investigating age-related memory changes in cognitively healthy older adults, in the absence of neurodegenerative disorders. Previous studies have reported age-related domain-specific changes in older adults, showing increased difficulty encoding and processing object information but minimal to no impairment in processing spatial information compared to younger adults.However, few of these studies have examined age-related changes in the encoding of concurrently presented object and spatial stimuli, specifically the integration of both spatial and non-spatial (object) information. To more closely resemble real-life memory encoding and the integration of both spatial and non-spatial information, the current study developed a new experimental paradigm with novel environments that allowed for the placement of different objects in different positions within the environment. The current findings show that older adults have decreased performance in recognizing changes of the object position within the spatial context but no significant differences in recognizing changes in the identity of the object within the spatial context compared to younger adults. These findings suggest there may be potential age-related differences in the mechanisms underlying the representations of complex environments and furthermore, the integration of spatial and non-spatial information may be differentially processed relative to independent and isolated representations of object and spatial information.

scholarly journals Neural distinctiveness declines with age in auditory cortex and is associated with auditory GABA levels

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Poortata Lalwani ◽  
Holly Gagnon ◽  
Kaitlin Cassady ◽  
Molly Simmonite ◽  
Scott Peltier ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Visual Cortex ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
Magnetic Resonance ◽  
Auditory Cortex ◽  
Aging Brain ◽  
Resonance Spectroscopy ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Activation Patterns ◽  
Age Related

AbstractNeural activation patterns in the ventral visual cortex in response to different categories of visual stimuli (e.g., faces vs. houses) are less selective, or distinctive, in older adults than in younger adults, a phenomenon known as age-related neural dedifferentiation. Previous work in animals suggests that age-related reductions of the inhibitory neurotransmitter, gamma aminobutyric acid (GABA), may play a role in this age-related decline in neural distinctiveness. In this study, we investigated whether neural dedifferentiation extends to auditory cortex and whether individual differences in GABA are associated with individual differences in neural distinctiveness in humans. 20 healthy young adults (ages 18-29) and 23 healthy older adults (over 65) completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan, during which neural activity was estimated while they listened to foreign speech and music. GABA levels in the auditory, ventrovisual and sensorimotor cortex were estimated in the same individuals in a separate magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) scan. Relative to the younger adults, the older adults exhibited both (1) less distinct activation patterns for music vs. speech stimuli and (2) lower GABA levels in the auditory cortex. Also, individual differences in auditory GABA levels (but not ventrovisual or sensorimotor GABA levels) predicted individual differences in neural distinctiveness in the auditory cortex in the older adults. These results demonstrate that age-related neural dedifferentiation extends to the auditory cortex and suggest that declining GABA levels may play a role in neural dedifferentiation in older adults.Significance StatementPrior work has revealed age-related neural dedifferentiation in the visual cortex. GABA levels also decline with age in several parts of the human cortex. Here, we report that these two age-related changes are linked; neural dedifferentiation is associated with lower GABA levels in older adults. We also show that age-related neural dedifferentiation extends to auditory cortex, suggesting that it may be a general feature of the aging brain. These findings provide novel insights into the neurochemical basis of age-related neural dedifferentiation in humans and also offer a potential new avenue for investigating age-related declines in central auditory processing.

scholarly journals MORAL GAIN OR DECAY? EXAMINING AGE-RELATED CHANGES IN MORAL JUDGMENT

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S785-S785
Author(s):  
Minjie Lu ◽  
Helene H Fung
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Moral Conviction ◽  
Cognition And Emotion ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Affective Dimensions ◽  
Age Related Changes

Abstract The present study investigates age-related changes in moral judgment. In particular, we examined both cognitive and affective dimensions of morality in contributing to moral punishment. One hundred and twenty participants (aged from 22 to 75) recruited from Mturk were presented with 10 moral transgression stories (e.g. lying, harming), and reported their wrongness judgment, moral conviction, emotional experience, and moral punishment. Results revealed divergent patterns on the relationships between age and the evaluations on cognition and emotion. In terms of cognitive evaluation, compared to younger adults, older adults perceived immoral acts as more wrong and considered their stands as more connected to their moral conviction. However, older adults reported less intense negative emotions (anger, disgust, contempt), suggesting they were less aroused by immoral acts. In terms of moral punishment, age was negatively correlated with punishment, and this correlation was mediated by the age-related decrease in negative emotions.

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