scholarly journals Age Differences in the Frontal Lateralization of Verbal and Spatial Working Memory Revealed by PET

2000 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 174-187 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia A. Reuter-Lorenz ◽  
John Jonides ◽  
Edward E. Smith ◽  
Alan Hartley ◽  
Andrea Miller ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Cognitive Aging ◽  
Spatial Working Memory ◽  
Verbal Working Memory ◽  
Opposite Hemisphere ◽  
Global Pattern ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Age Related

Age-related decline in working memory figures prominently in theories of cognitive aging. However, the effects of aging on the neural substrate of working memory are largely unknown. Positron emission tomography (PET) was used to investigate verbal and spatial short-term storage (3 sec) in older and younger adults. Previous investigations with younger subjects performing these same tasks have revealed asymmetries in the lateral organization of verbal and spatial working memory. Using volume of interest (VOI) analyses that specifically compared activation at sites identified with working memory to their homologous twin in the opposite hemisphere, we show pronounced age differences in this organization, particularly in the frontal lobes: In younger adults, activation is predominantly left lateralized for verbal working memory, and right lateralized for spatial working memory, whereas older adults show a global pattern of anterior bilateral activation for both types of memory. Analyses of frontal subregions indicate that several underlying patterns contribute to global bilaterality in older adults: most notably, bilateral activation in areas associated with rehearsal, and paradoxical laterality in dorsolateral prefrontal sites (DLPFC; greater left activation for spatial and greater right activation for verbal). We consider several mechanisms that could account for these age differences including the possibility that bilateral activation reflects recruitment to compensate for neural decline.

scholarly journals Resting‐State EEG Microstates Parallel Age‐Related Differences in Allocentric Spatial Working Memory Performance

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adeline Jabès ◽  
Giuliana Klencklen ◽  
Paolo Ruggeri ◽  
Christoph M. Michel ◽  
Pamela Banta Lavenex ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Resting State ◽  
Cognitive Aging ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Spatial Working Memory ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Age Related

AbstractAlterations of resting-state EEG microstates have been associated with various neurological disorders and behavioral states. Interestingly, age-related differences in EEG microstate organization have also been reported, and it has been suggested that resting-state EEG activity may predict cognitive capacities in healthy individuals across the lifespan. In this exploratory study, we performed a microstate analysis of resting-state brain activity and tested allocentric spatial working memory performance in healthy adult individuals: twenty 25–30-year-olds and twenty-five 64–75-year-olds. We found a lower spatial working memory performance in older adults, as well as age-related differences in the five EEG microstate maps A, B, C, C′ and D, but especially in microstate maps C and C′. These two maps have been linked to neuronal activity in the frontal and parietal brain regions which are associated with working memory and attention, cognitive functions that have been shown to be sensitive to aging. Older adults exhibited lower global explained variance and occurrence of maps C and C′. Moreover, although there was a higher probability to transition from any map towards maps C, C′ and D in young and older adults, this probability was lower in older adults. Finally, although age-related differences in resting-state EEG microstates paralleled differences in allocentric spatial working memory performance, we found no evidence that any individual or combination of resting-state EEG microstate parameter(s) could reliably predict individual spatial working memory performance. Whether the temporal dynamics of EEG microstates may be used to assess healthy cognitive aging from resting-state brain activity requires further investigation.

scholarly journals Effects of Age Differences in Memory Formation on Neural Mechanisms of Consolidation and Retrieval

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myriam C. Sander ◽  
Yana Fandakova ◽  
Markus Werkle-Bergner
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Episodic Memory ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Cognitive Aging ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Memory Decline ◽  
Memory Processing ◽  
Memory Impairments ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Memory Network

Episodic memory decline is a hallmark of cognitive aging and a multifaceted phenomenon. We review studies that target age differences across different memory processing stages, i.e., from encoding to retrieval. The available evidence cumulates in the proposition that older adults form memories of lower quality than younger adults, which has negative downstream consequences for later processing stages. We argue that low memory quality in combination with age-related neural decline of key regions of the episodic memory network puts older adults in a double jeopardy situation that finally results in broader memory impairments in older compared to younger adults.

Age Differences in Memory-Based Task Switching With and Without Cues

2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 187-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergei A. Schapkin ◽  
Patrick D. Gajewski ◽  
Gabriele Freude
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Task Switching ◽  
Response Selection ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Switch Costs ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Mixing Costs ◽  
And Task

The study investigated the neuronal mechanisms of age-related changes in mixing costs during memory-based task switching with two levels of working memory (WM) load. Forty-eight healthy younger and 45 healthy older participants performed a memory based (high WM load) and a memory plus cue based (low WM load) switching task while event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were registered. Older adults revealed larger mixing costs in both reaction time (RT) and accuracy at higher WM loads than younger adults. The presence of explicit cues substantially reduced age differences in mixing costs for accuracy but not for RT. Similarly, no age differences regarding local switch costs were found at lower WM load. Surprisingly, larger RT local costs in younger adults than in older adults were found in the memory-based block. The CNV was reduced under high WM load and positively correlated with accuracy mixing costs in older adults. The target-locked occipital N1 and fronto-central P2 were larger in older adults relative to younger adults irrespective of WM load. The P2 latency reflected the pattern of switch costs observed in behavioral data. Moreover, P2 latency positively correlated with RT mixing costs in older adults. Elderly also showed a delayed N2 and a delayed and reduced P3b. The results suggest that age-related differences in mixing costs may be partially due to a less efficient task preparation and task set maintenance (CNV) in elderly. However, elderly attempted to compensate for these deficits by permanent activation of mechanisms relating to stimulus encoding (N1) and task-set retrieval (P2). Finally, the delayed fronto-central N2 as well as the delayed and reduced parietal P3b strongly suggest delays of response selection and working memory updating in elderly due to an increase in selection threshold or in response selection variability constituting the performance decline.

Neural Recruitment and Cognitive Aging: Two Hemispheres Are Better Than One, Especially as You Age

1999 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 494-500 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia A. Reuter-Lorenz ◽  
Louise Stanczak ◽  
Andrea C. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Cognitive Aging ◽  
Visual Fields ◽  
Complex Task ◽  
Brain Areas ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Age Related Changes ◽  
Better Than

Several neuroimaging studies have reported that older adults show weaker activations in some brain areas together with stronger activations in other areas, compared with younger adults performing the same task. This pattern may reflect neural recruitment that compensates for age-related neural declines. The recruitment hypothesis was tested in a visual laterality study that investigated age differences in the efficiency of bihemispheric processing. Letter-matching tasks of varying complexity were performed under two conditions: (a) matching letters projected to the same visual field (hemisphere) and (b) matching letters projected to opposite visual fields (hemispheres). As predicted by the recruitment hypothesis, older adults generally performed better in the bilateral than unilateral condition, whereas younger adults showed this pattern only for the most complex task. We discuss the relation between these results and neuroimaging evidence for recruitment, and the relevance of the present bihemispheric advantage to other evidence for age-related changes in interhemispheric transfer.

Age Differences in the Social Associative Learning of Trust Information

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kendra Leigh Seaman ◽  
Alexander P. Christensen ◽  
Katherine Senn ◽  
Jessica Cooper ◽  
Brittany Shane Cassidy
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Social Cues ◽  
Trust Game ◽  
Time Model ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Cortical Areas ◽  
Age Related ◽  
The Social ◽  
Over Time

Trust is a key component of social interaction. Older adults, however, often exhibit excessive trust relative to younger adults. One explanation is that older adults may learn to trust differently than younger adults. Here, we examine how younger (N=33) and older adults (N=30) learn to trust over time. Participants completed a classic iterative trust game with three partners. Younger and older adults shared similar amounts but differed in how they shared money. Compared to younger adults, older adults invested more with untrustworthy partners and less with trustworthy partners. As a group, older adults displayed less learning than younger adults. However, computational modeling shows that this is because older adults are more likely to forget what they have learned over time. Model-based fMRI analyses revealed several age-related differences in neural processing. Younger adults showed prediction error signals in social processing areas while older adults showed over-recruitment of several cortical areas. Collectively, these findings suggest that older adults attend to and learn from social cues differently from younger adults.

scholarly journals Adult age differences in subjective responses to dynamic socioemotional incentives

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sade J Abiodun ◽  
Galen McAllister ◽  
Gregory Russell Samanez-Larkin ◽  
Kendra Leigh Seaman
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Emotional Valence ◽  
Incentive Motivation ◽  
Social Signals ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Positivity Effect ◽  
Adult Age ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Adult Age Differences

Facial expressions are powerful communicative social signals that motivate feelings and action in the observer. However, research on incentive motivation has overwhelmingly focused on money and points and the limited research on social incentives has been mostly focused on responses in young adulthood. Previous research on the age-related positivity effect and adult age differences in social motivation suggest that older adults might experience higher levels of positive arousal to socioemotional stimuli than younger adults. Affect ratings following dynamic emotional expressions (anger, happiness, sadness) varying in magnitude of expression showed that higher magnitude expressions elicited higher arousal and valence ratings. Older adults did not differ significantly in levels of arousal when compared to younger adults, however their ratings of emotional valence were significantly higher as the magnitude of expressions increased. The findings provide novel evidence that socioemotional incentives may be relatively more reinforcing as adults age. More generally, these dynamic socioemotional stimuli that vary in magnitude are ideal for future studies of more naturalistic affect elicitation, studies of social incentive processing, and use in incentive-driven choice tasks.

scholarly journals Resolving Age-Related Differences in Working Memory: Equating Perception and Attention Makes Older Adults Remember as Well as Younger Adults

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Verhaeghen ◽  
Shriradha Geigerman ◽  
Haoxiang Yang ◽  
Alejandra C. Montoya ◽  
Dobromir Rahnev
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Age Related

scholarly journals C-24 Longitudinal Trajectories of Working Memory Performance in Typically Aging Older Adults

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (6) ◽  
pp. 1053-1053
Author(s):  
M Gonzalez Catalan ◽  
C Lindbergh ◽  
A Staffaroni ◽  
S Walters ◽  
K Casaletto ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Cognitive Aging ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Clinical Dementia Rating ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Time Interaction ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Random Slopes ◽  
Aging Adults

Abstract Objective Cross-sectional studies have shown age-related differences in working memory (WM), but the trajectory is unclear due to the scarcity of longitudinal studies. Additional research is needed to better characterize the course of age-related changes in WM in older adults. The present study sought to address this gap in the literature by conducting serial assessments of WM in a longitudinally followed cohort of typically aging adults. We hypothesized a significant age × time interaction, such that WM would show pronounced declines with advancing age. Methods 640 functionally intact participants in an aging cohort (clinical dementia rating = 0; age range 52-99, mean age = 75) completed a computerized WM measure, Running Letter Memory (RLM), every ~15 months for up to 8.5 years (mean follow-up = 1.9 years). Longitudinal changes in RLM scores were analyzed using linear mixed effects models, allowing for random slopes and intercepts. All models were adjusted for sex and education. Results RLM performance did not significantly decline over time (b = -.14, p = .43). As hypothesized, there was a significant age × time interaction predicting RLM scores (b = -.08, p = .006). Specifically, RLM performance remained relatively stable (or slightly improved) until around age 75, beyond which increasingly precipitous declines were observed with advancing age. Conclusion The present results suggest that WM performance does not evidence declines until the mid-70s in typically aging adults, at which point increasingly steep decline trajectories are observed with advancing age. These findings highlight that cognitive aging does not occur at a constant rate in late life.

scholarly journals ANGER, LOVE, SADNESS: DO EMOTION WORDS HAVE THE SAME SEMANTIC MEANING ACROSS AGE-GROUPS?

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S841-S842
Author(s):  
Madeline J Nichols ◽  
Jennifer A Bellingtier ◽  
Frances Buttelmann
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Semantic Meaning ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Emotion Words ◽  
Emotion Word ◽  
Age Related

Abstract Every day we use emotion words to describe our experiences, but past research finds that the meanings of these words can vary. Furthermore, historical shifts in language use and experiential knowledge of the emotions may contribute to age-differences in what these emotion words convey. We examined age-related differences in the valence, arousal, and expression connoted by the words anger, love, and sadness. We predicted age-related differences in the semantic meanings of the words would emerge such that older adults would more clearly differentiate the positivity/negativity of the words, whereas younger adults would report higher endorsement for the conveyed arousal and expression. Participants included American and German older adults (N=61; mean age=68.98) and younger adults (N=77; mean age=20.77). Using the GRID instrument (Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, 2013), they rated each emotion word for its valence, arousal, and expression when used by a speaker of the participant’s native language. Across emotions and dimensions, older adults were generally more moderate in their understanding of emotion words. For example, German older adults rated anger and sadness as suggesting the speaker felt less bad and more good than the younger adults. American older adults rated love as connoting the speaker felt more bad and less good than younger adults. Arousal ratings were higher for German younger, as opposed to older, adults. Cultural differences were most pronounced for sadness such that German participants gave more moderate answers than American participants. Overall, our research suggests that there are age-related differences in the understanding of emotion words.

Reduced Suppression or Labile Memory? Mechanisms of Inefficient Filtering of Irrelevant Information in Older Adults

2006 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 637-650 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica Fabiani ◽  
Kathy A. Low ◽  
Emily Wee ◽  
Jeffrey J. Sable ◽  
Gabriele Gratton
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Working Memory ◽  
Cognitive Aging ◽  
Memory Function ◽  
Processing System ◽  
Sensory Memory ◽  
Attention Control ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Memory Decay ◽  
Age Related Changes

Cognitive aging theories emphasize the decrease in efficiency of inhibitory processes and attention control in normal aging, which, in turn, may result in reduction of working memory function. Accordingly, some of these age-related changes may be due to faster sensory memory decay or to inefficient filtering of irrelevant sensory information (sensory gating). Here, event-related brain potentials and the event-related optical signal were recorded in younger and older adults passively listening to tone trains. To determine whether age differentially affects decay of sensory memory templates over short intervals, trains were separated by delays of either 1 or 5 sec. To determine whether age affects the suppression of responses to unattended repeated stimuli, we evaluated the brain activity elicited by successive train stimuli. Some trains started with a shorter-duration stimulus (deviant trains). Results showed that both electrical and optical responses to tones were more persistent with repeated stimulation in older adults than in younger adults, whereas the effects of delay were similar in the two groups. A mismatch negativity (MMN) was elicited by the first stimulus in deviant trains. This MMN was larger for 1- than 5-sec delay, but did not differ across groups. These data suggest that age-related changes in sensory processing are likely due to inefficient filtering of repeated information, rather than to faster sensory memory decay. This inefficient filtering may be due to, or interact with, reduced attention control. Furthermore, it may increase the noise levels in the information processing system and thus contribute to problems with working memory and speed of processing.

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