Progesterone to improve neurocognitive outcomes following cranial irradiation.

128 Background: Neurocognitive functional decline is a common sequalae of cranial irradiation (CI) that significantly impacts quality of life. Preclinical studies and randomized clinical trials show that following traumatic brain injury and cerebrovascular accidents, premenopausal women demonstrate decreased mortality and improved neurocognitive function, with these benefits presumed to be derived from progesterone. We hypothesized that progesterone may serve similar role in neuroprotection following cranial irradiation. Methods: Adult non-tumor bearing wild type C57BL/6 male mice were treated with two separate fractionated radiation therapy regimen (9 Gy and 15 Gy) to the brain. Cohorts of these mice were administered progesterone (16mg/kg daily) as a pretreatment for 3 days and concurrent with the radiotherapy for a total of 14 days with tapering during the last two days. The animals were then tested using different behavioral measures for cognitive function including morris water maze (MWM) for assessing spatial and related forms of learning and memory, elevated plus maze (EPM), , and spontaneous locomotor activity (SLA) tests. Mice were tested for cognitive function on day 10 and after 30 days of treatment for short and long-term effects of (CI) on memory function. Results: All irradiated mice showed statistically significant decline in MWM, EPM, and SLA measures. There were no significant differences in the 9 Gy versus 15 Gy cohorts. Progesterone administration produced a statistically significant group effect (F (4, 25) = 8.553; P<0.001) in the improvement of long-term memory function over 5 days of learning process. Progesterone administration also demonstrated a significant group effect (F (4, 25) = 8.613; P<0.001) in the probe trial, and a significant beneficial effect (F (4, 25)= 7.993; P<0.001) in short-term memory functional latency to reach the platform. Conclusions: The preclinical data show that progesterone improves radiation-induced deficits in short-and long-term memory functions in adult mice. Further work is required to show if progesterone may show similar clinical benefit in neuroprotection for adults undergoing prophylactic CI or definitive CI for brain metastases or benign intracranial processes such as AVM.

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The effects of acute exercise on short- and long-term memory: Considerations for the timing of exercise and phases of memory

Europe’s Journal of Psychology ◽

10.5964/ejop.2955 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 17 (1) ◽

pp. 85-103

Author(s):

Paul D. Loprinzi ◽

Sierra Day ◽

Rebecca Hendry ◽

Sara Hoffman ◽

Alexis Love ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Heart Rate ◽

High Intensity ◽

Acute Exercise ◽

Memory Function ◽

Word List ◽

Long Term Memory ◽

Heart Rate Reserve ◽

Term Memory ◽

Short And Long Term

The specific questions addressed from this research include: (1) Does high-intensity acute exercise improve memory?, (2) If so, do the mechanisms occur via encoding, consolidation, or retrieval? and (3) If acute exercise occurs in multiple phases of memory (e.g., before encoding and during consolidation), does this have an additive effect on memory? Three experimental, within-subject, counterbalanced studies were conducted among young adults. High-intensity exercise involved a 20-minutes bout of exercise at 75% of heart rate reserve. Memory was evaluated from a word-list task, including multiple evaluations out to 24-hours post-encoding. The timing of the exercise and memory assessments were carefully positioned to evaluate whether any improvements in memory were driven by mechanisms related to encoding, consolidation, and/or retrieval. We demonstrated that high-intensity acute exercise enhanced memory. This effect was robust (repeatable) and occurred through encoding, consolidation and retrieval-based mechanisms. Further, incorporating acute exercise into multiple phases of memory additively enhanced memory function.

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A date to remember: the nature of memory in savant calendrical calculators

Psychological Medicine ◽

10.1017/s0033291798007776 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 29 (1) ◽

pp. 145-160 ◽

Cited By ~ 43

Author(s):

L. HEAVEY ◽

L. PRING ◽

B. HERMELIN

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Processing ◽

Memory Function ◽

Long Term Memory ◽

Term Memory ◽

Processing Style ◽

Calculation Skills ◽

Short And Long Term ◽

Day Of The Week ◽

Better Than

Background. Savant calendar calculators can supply with speed the day of the week of a given date. Although memory is suggested to be an important component of this unusual ability, memory function has never been systematically investigated in these skilled yet learning impaired individuals.Methods. Eight savant calendrical calculators, most of whom had autism, were compared with eight verbal IQ, age and diagnosis matched controls on digit and word span tests and measures of long-term memory for words and calendrical information (individual years). In an analogue to the ‘generation effect’, the savants' memory for dates was also compared following calculation and study/read tasks.Results. The savants did not differ from controls on measures of general short- and long-term memory. They did, however, show a clear recall superiority for the long-term retention of calendrical material. They also remembered calculated dates better than those that were only studied.Conclusions. A general mnemonic advantage cannot explain savant date calculation skills. Rather, through exposure to date information, the savants are suggested to develop a structured calendar-related knowledge base with the process of calculation utilizing the interrelations within this knowledge store. The cognitive processing style characteristic of autism may also play a role in the acquisition of this savant ability.

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Experimental effects of acute exercise on forgetting

Physiology International ◽

10.1556/2060.2020.00033 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 107 (3) ◽

pp. 359-375

Author(s):

D.C. Moore ◽

S. Ryu ◽

P.D. Loprinzi

Keyword(s):

Episodic Memory ◽

Acute Exercise ◽

Short Term Memory ◽

Memory Function ◽

Experimental Studies ◽

Long Term Memory ◽

Short Term ◽

Term Memory ◽

Short And Long Term

AbstractObjectivePrior research has evaluated the effects of acute exercise on episodic memory function. These studies have, on occasion, demonstrated that acute exercise may enhance both short- and long-term memory. It is uncertain as to whether the acute exercise improvements in long-term memory are a result of acute exercise attenuating declines in long-term memory, or rather, are driven by the enhancement effects of acute exercise on short-term memory. The present empirical study evaluates whether the decline from short- to long-term is influenced by acute exercise. This relationship is plausible as exercise has been shown to activate neurophysiological pathways (e.g., RAC1) that are involved in the mechanisms of forgetting.MethodsTo evaluate the effects of acute exercise on forgetting, we used data from 12 of our laboratory's prior experiments (N = 538). Across these 12 experiments, acute exercise ranged from 10 to 15 mins in duration (moderate-to-vigorous intensity). Episodic memory was assessed from word-list or paragraph-based assessments. Short-term memory was assessed immediately after encoding, with long-term memory assessed approximately 20-min later. Forgetting was calculated as the difference in short- and long-term memory performance.ResultsAcute exercise (vs. seated control) was not associated with an attenuated forgetting effect (d = 0.10; 95% CI: −0.04, 0.25, P = 0.17). We observed no evidence of a significant moderation effect (Q = 6.16, df = 17, P = 0.17, I2 = 0.00) for any of the evaluated parameters, including study design, exercise intensity and delay period.ConclusionAcross our 12 experimental studies, acute exercise was not associated with an attenuated forgetting effect. We discuss these implications for future research that evaluates the effects of acute exercise on long-term memory function.

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Comparison of Auditory, Language, Memory, and Attention Abilities in Children With and Without Listening Difficulties

American Journal of Audiology ◽

10.1044/2020_aja-20-00018 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 29 (4) ◽

pp. 710-727

Author(s):

Beula M. Magimairaj ◽

Naveen K. Nagaraj ◽

Alexander V. Sergeev ◽

Natalie J. Benafield

Keyword(s):

Auditory Processing ◽

Short Term Memory ◽

Group Differences ◽

Long Term Memory ◽

Short Term ◽

Significant Group ◽

Term Memory ◽

Memory And Attention ◽

Speed And Accuracy

Objectives School-age children with and without parent-reported listening difficulties (LiD) were compared on auditory processing, language, memory, and attention abilities. The objective was to extend what is known so far in the literature about children with LiD by using multiple measures and selective novel measures across the above areas. Design Twenty-six children who were reported by their parents as having LiD and 26 age-matched typically developing children completed clinical tests of auditory processing and multiple measures of language, attention, and memory. All children had normal-range pure-tone hearing thresholds bilaterally. Group differences were examined. Results In addition to significantly poorer speech-perception-in-noise scores, children with LiD had reduced speed and accuracy of word retrieval from long-term memory, poorer short-term memory, sentence recall, and inferencing ability. Statistically significant group differences were of moderate effect size; however, standard test scores of children with LiD were not clinically poor. No statistically significant group differences were observed in attention, working memory capacity, vocabulary, and nonverbal IQ. Conclusions Mild signal-to-noise ratio loss, as reflected by the group mean of children with LiD, supported the children's functional listening problems. In addition, children's relative weakness in select areas of language performance, short-term memory, and long-term memory lexical retrieval speed and accuracy added to previous research on evidence-based areas that need to be evaluated in children with LiD who almost always have heterogenous profiles. Importantly, the functional difficulties faced by children with LiD in relation to their test results indicated, to some extent, that commonly used assessments may not be adequately capturing the children's listening challenges. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.12808607

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