scholarly journals A Scale-Free Gradient of Cognitive Resource Disruptions in Childhood Psychopathology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Stier ◽  
Carlos Cardenas-Iniguez ◽  
Omid Kardan ◽  
Tyler M. Moore ◽  
Francisco A. C. Meyer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Resource Allocation ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Factor Scores ◽  
General Psychopathology ◽  
Scale Free ◽  
Cognitive Resource ◽  
Impaired Cognitive Function ◽  
Fractal Analyses

The Hurst exponent (H) isolated in fractal analyses of neuroimaging time-series is implicated broadly in cognition. The connection between H and the mathematics of criticality makes it a candidate measure of individual differences in cognitive resource allocation. Relationships between H and multiple mental disorders have been detected, suggesting that H is transdiagnostically associated with psychopathology. Here, we demonstrate a gradient of decreased H with increased general psychopathology and attention-deficit/hyperactivity extracted factor scores during a working memory task which predicts concurrent and future working memory performance in 1,839 children. This gradient defines psychological and functional axes which indicate that psychopathology is associated with an imbalance in resource allocation between fronto-parietal and sensory-motor regions, driven by reduced resource allocation to fonto-parietal regions. This suggests the hypothesis that impaired cognitive function associated with psychopathology follows from a reduced cognitive resource pool and a reduction in resources allocated to the task at hand.

Mindfulness Training as Cognitive Training in High-Demand Cohorts: An Initial Study in Elite Military Servicemembers

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Paul Zanesco ◽  
Ekaterina Denkova ◽  
Scott L. Rogers ◽  
William K. MacNulty ◽  
Amishi P. Jha
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Cognitive Training ◽  
Short Form ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Selection Criterion ◽  
Initial Study ◽  
Mindfulness Training ◽  
Training Tool ◽  
Cognitive Failures

Cognitive ability is a key selection criterion for entry into many elite professions. Herein, we investigate whether mindfulness training (MT) can enhance cognitive performance in elite military forces. The cognitive effects of a short-form 8-hour MT program contextualized for military cohorts, referred to as Mindfulness-Based Attention Training (MBAT), were assessed. Servicemembers received either a 2-week (n = 40) or 4-week (n = 36) version of MBAT, or no training (NTC, n = 44). Sustained attention and working memory task performance along with self-reported cognitive failures were assessed at study onset (T1) and 8-weeks later (T2). In contrast to both the NTC and 2-week MT groups, the 4-week MT group significantly improved over time on attention and working memory outcome measures. Among the 4-week more so than the 2-week MBAT participants, working memory performance improvements were correlated with their amount of out-of-class MT practice. In addition to these group-wise effects, all participants receiving MBAT decreased in their self-reported cognitive failures from T1 to T2. Importantly, none of these improvements were related to self-reported task motivation. Together, these results suggest that short-form MT, when delivered over a 4-week delivery schedule, may be an effective cognitive training tool in elite military cohorts.

scholarly journals Working Memory Performance under a Negative Affect Is More Susceptible to Higher Cognitive Workloads with Different Neural Haemodynamic Correlates

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 935
Author(s):  
Ying Xing Feng ◽  
Masashi Kiguchi ◽  
Wei Chun Ung ◽  
Sarat Chandra Dass ◽  
Ahmad Fadzil Mohd Hani ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Task Performance ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Affective State ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Interactive Effects ◽  
Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy ◽  
Affective Factors ◽  
Related Stress ◽  
Haemodynamic Activity

The effect of stress on task performance is complex, too much or too little stress negatively affects performance and there exists an optimal level of stress to drive optimal performance. Task difficulty and external affective factors are distinct stressors that impact cognitive performance. Neuroimaging studies showed that mood affects working memory performance and the correlates are changes in haemodynamic activity in the prefrontal cortex (PFC). We investigate the interactive effects of affective states and working memory load (WML) on working memory task performance and haemodynamic activity using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) neuroimaging on the PFC of healthy participants. We seek to understand if haemodynamic responses could tell apart workload-related stress from situational stress arising from external affective distraction. We found that the haemodynamic changes towards affective stressor- and workload-related stress were more dominant in the medial and lateral PFC, respectively. Our study reveals distinct affective state-dependent modulations of haemodynamic activity with increasing WML in n-back tasks, which correlate with decreasing performance. The influence of a negative effect on performance is greater at higher WML, and haemodynamic activity showed evident changes in temporal, and both spatial and strength of activation differently with WML.

Does Strategic Memory Training Improve the Working Memory Performance of Younger and Older Adults?

2007 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 311-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Carretti ◽  
Erika Borella ◽  
Rossana De Beni
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Memory Training ◽  
Control Groups ◽  
Improved Performance ◽  
Strategic Training ◽  
Strategic Memory ◽  
Experimental Group

Abstract. The paper examines the effect of strategic training on the performance of younger and older adults in an immediate list-recall and a working memory task. The experimental groups of younger and older adults received three sessions of memory training, teaching the use of mental images to improve the memorization of word lists. In contrast, the control groups were not instructed to use any particular strategy, but they were requested to carry out the memory exercises. The results showed that strategic training improved performance of both the younger and older experimental groups in the immediate list recall and in the working memory task. Of particular interest, the improvement in working memory performance of the older experimental group was comparable to that of the younger experimental group.

scholarly journals Memory-Related Frontal Brainwaves Predict Transition to Mild Cognitive Impairment in Healthy Older Individuals Five Years Before Diagnosis

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Yang Jiang ◽  
Juan Li ◽  
Frederick A. Schmitt ◽  
Gregory A. Jicha ◽  
Nancy B. Munro ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Cognitive Impairment ◽  
Mild Cognitive Impairment ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Cognitive Status ◽  
Older Individuals ◽  
Increased Risk ◽  
Differentiation Pattern

Background: Early prognosis of high-risk older adults for amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), using noninvasive and sensitive neuromarkers, is key for early prevention of Alzheimer’s disease. We have developed individualized measures in electrophysiological brain signals during working memory that distinguish patients with aMCI from age-matched cognitively intact older individuals. Objective: Here we test longitudinally the prognosis of the baseline neuromarkers for aMCI risk. We hypothesized that the older individuals diagnosed with incident aMCI already have aMCI-like brain signatures years before diagnosis. Methods: Electroencephalogram (EEG) and memory performance were recorded during a working memory task at baseline. The individualized baseline neuromarkers, annual cognitive status, and longitudinal changes in memory recall scores up to 10 years were analyzed. Results: Seven of the 19 cognitively normal older adults were diagnosed with incident aMCI for a median 5.2 years later. The seven converters’ frontal brainwaves were statistically identical to those patients with diagnosed aMCI (n = 14) at baseline. Importantly, the converters’ baseline memory-related brainwaves (reduced mean frontal responses to memory targets) were significantly different from those who remained normal. Furthermore, differentiation pattern of left frontal memory-related responses (targets versus nontargets) was associated with an increased risk hazard of aMCI (HR = 1.47, 95% CI 1.03, 2.08). Conclusion: The memory-related neuromarkers detect MCI-like brain signatures about five years before diagnosis. The individualized frontal neuromarkers index increased MCI risk at baseline. These noninvasive neuromarkers during our Bluegrass memory task have great potential to be used repeatedly for individualized prognosis of MCI risk and progression before clinical diagnosis.

scholarly journals Negative Effects of Embodiment in a Visuo-Spatial Working Memory Task in Children, Young Adults, and Older Adults

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gianluca Amico ◽  
Sabine Schaefer
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Young Adults ◽  
Spatial Information ◽  
Spatial Working Memory ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Negative Effects

Studies examining the effect of embodied cognition have shown that linking one’s body movements to a cognitive task can enhance performance. The current study investigated whether concurrent walking while encoding or recalling spatial information improves working memory performance, and whether 10-year-old children, young adults, or older adults (Mage = 72 years) are affected differently by embodiment. The goal of the Spatial Memory Task was to encode and recall sequences of increasing length by reproducing positions of target fields in the correct order. The nine targets were positioned in a random configuration on a large square carpet (2.5 m × 2.5 m). During encoding and recall, participants either did not move, or they walked into the target fields. In a within-subjects design, all possible combinations of encoding and recall conditions were tested in counterbalanced order. Contrary to our predictions, moving particularly impaired encoding, but also recall. These negative effects were present in all age groups, but older adults’ memory was hampered even more strongly by walking during encoding and recall. Our results indicate that embodiment may not help people to memorize spatial information, but can create a dual-task situation instead.

scholarly journals Emotional Working Memory and Alzheimer’s Disease

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Mammarella ◽  
Beth Fairfield
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Alzheimer's Disease ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Emotional Information ◽  
Healthy Older Adults ◽  
Affective Stimuli ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Dementia Of Alzheimer’S Type

A number of recent studies have reported that working memory does not seem to show typical age-related deficits in healthy older adults when emotional information is involved. Differently, studies about the short-term ability to encode and actively manipulate emotional information in dementia of Alzheimer’s type are few and have yielded mixed results. Here, we review behavioural and neuroimaging evidence that points to a complex interaction between emotion modulation and working memory in Alzheimer’s. In fact, depending on the function involved, patients may or may not show an emotional benefit in their working memory performance. In addition, this benefit is not always clearly biased (e.g., towards negative or positive information). We interpret this complex pattern of results as a consequence of the interaction between multiple factors including the severity of Alzheimer’s disease, the nature of affective stimuli, and type of working memory task.

scholarly journals Contralateral Delay Activity Tracks Fluctuations in Working Memory Performance

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (9) ◽  
pp. 1229-1240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsten C. S. Adam ◽  
Matthew K. Robison ◽  
Edward K. Vogel
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
Memory Load ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Memory Storage ◽  
Alpha Power ◽  
Working Memory Load ◽  
Contralateral Delay Activity ◽  
Trial Performance

Neural measures of working memory storage, such as the contralateral delay activity (CDA), are powerful tools in working memory research. CDA amplitude is sensitive to working memory load, reaches an asymptote at known behavioral limits, and predicts individual differences in capacity. An open question, however, is whether neural measures of load also track trial-by-trial fluctuations in performance. Here, we used a whole-report working memory task to test the relationship between CDA amplitude and working memory performance. If working memory failures are due to decision-based errors and retrieval failures, CDA amplitude would not differentiate good and poor performance trials when load is held constant. If failures arise during storage, then CDA amplitude should track both working memory load and trial-by-trial performance. As expected, CDA amplitude tracked load (Experiment 1), reaching an asymptote at three items. In Experiment 2, we tracked fluctuations in trial-by-trial performance. CDA amplitude was larger (more negative) for high-performance trials compared with low-performance trials, suggesting that fluctuations in performance were related to the successful storage of items. During working memory failures, participants oriented their attention to the correct side of the screen (lateralized P1) and maintained covert attention to the correct side during the delay period (lateralized alpha power suppression). Despite the preservation of attentional orienting, we found impairments consistent with an executive attention theory of individual differences in working memory capacity; fluctuations in executive control (indexed by pretrial frontal theta power) may be to blame for storage failures.

scholarly journals Shielding working-memory representations from temporally predictable external interference

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniela Gresch ◽  
Sage Boettcher ◽  
Freek van Ede ◽  
Anna C. Nobre
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Memory Retention ◽  
Protective Effects ◽  
External Interference ◽  
Irrelevant Distractors ◽  
Temporal Predictability ◽  
Memory Representations ◽  
Memory Content

Protecting working-memory content from distracting external sensory inputs and intervening tasks is a ubiquitous demand in daily life. Here, we ask whether and how temporal expectations about external events can help mitigate effects of such interference during working-memory retention. We manipulated the temporal predictability of interfering items that occurred during the retention period of a visual working-memory task and report that temporal expectations reduce the detrimental influence of external interference on subsequent memory performance. Moreover, to determine if the protective effects of temporal expectations rely mainly on distractor suppression or also involve shielding of internal representations, we compared effects after irrelevant distractors that could be ignored vs. interrupters that required a response. Whereas distractor suppression may be sufficient to confer protection from predictable distractors, any benefits after interruption are likely to involve memory shielding. We found similar benefits of temporal expectations after both types of interference. We conclude that temporal expectations may play an important role in safeguarding behaviour based on working memory – acting, at least partly, through mechanisms that include the shielding of internal content from external interference.

scholarly journals Measuring memory is harder than you think: A crisis of measurement in memory research

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy F. Brady ◽  
Maria Martinovna Robinson ◽  
Jamal Rodgers Williams ◽  
John Wixted
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
False Alarm ◽  
False Alarm Rate ◽  
Eyewitness Identification ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Memory Task ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Memory Research ◽  
Hit Rate ◽  
Memory Signals

There is a crisis of measurement in memory research, with major implications for theory and practice. This crisis arises because of a critical complication present when measuring memory using the recognition memory task that dominates the study of working memory and long-term memory (“did you see this item? yes/no” or “did this item change? yes/no”). Such tasks give two measures of performance, the “hit rate” (how often you say you previously saw an item you actually did previously see) and the “false alarm rate” (how often you say you saw something you never saw). Yet what researchers want is one single, integrated measure of memory performance. Integrating the hit and false alarm rate into a single measure, however, requires a complex problem of counterfactual reasoning that depends on the (unknowable) distribution of underlying memory signals: when faced with two people differing in both hit rate and false alarm rate, the question of who had the better memory is really “who would have had more hits if they each had the same number of false alarms”. As a result of this difficulty, different literatures in memory research (e.g., visual working memory, eyewitness identification, picture memory, etc) have settled on a variety of distinct metrics to combine hit rates and false alarm rates (e.g., A’, corrected hit rate, percent correct, d’, diagnosticity ratios, K values, etc.). These metrics make different, contradictory assumptions about the distribution of latent memory signals, and all of their assumptions are frequently incorrect. Despite a large literature on how to properly measure memory performance, spanning decades, real-life decisions are often made using these metrics, even when they subsequently turn out to be wrong when memory is studied with better measures. We suggest that in order for the psychology and neuroscience of memory to become a cumulative, theory-driven science, more attention must be given to measurement issues. We make a concrete suggestion: the default memory task should change from old/new (“did you see this item’?”) to forced-choice (“which of these two items did you see?”). In situations where old/new variants are preferred (e.g., eyewitness identification; theoretical investigations of the nature of memory decisions), receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis should always be performed.

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