scholarly journals Face Masks Protect From Infection but May Impair Social Cognition in Older Adults and People With Dementia

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias L. Schroeter ◽  
Jana Kynast ◽  
Arno Villringer ◽  
Simon Baron-Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Social Cognition ◽  
Cognitive Decline ◽  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Mental States ◽  
High Impact ◽  
Compensatory Strategies ◽  
People With Dementia ◽  
Long Run ◽  
The Face

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic will have a high impact on older adults and people with Alzheimer's disease and other dementias. Social cognition enables the understanding of another individual's feelings, intentions, desires and mental states, which is particularly important during the COVID-19 pandemic. To prevent further spread of the disease face masks have been recommended. Although justified for prevention of this potentially devastating disease, they partly cover the face and hamper emotion recognition and probably mindreading. As social cognition is already affected by aging and dementia, strategies must be developed to cope with these profound changes of communication. Face masking even could accelerate cognitive decline in the long run. Further studies are of uppermost importance to address face masks' impact on social cognition in aging and dementia, for instance by longitudinally investigating decline before and in the pandemic, and to design compensatory strategies. These issues are also relevant for face masking in general, such as in medical surroundings—beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

scholarly journals Places Visited, Maintained, or Abandoned Outside Home: A Community Mobility Need of Older Adults With Dementia

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 673-673
Author(s):  
Isabel Margot-Cattin ◽  
Sophie Gaber ◽  
Nicolas Kuhne ◽  
Camilla Malinowski ◽  
Louise Nygard
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Cognitive Decline ◽  
Health Condition ◽  
Driving Cessation ◽  
Age In Place ◽  
Community Mobility ◽  
People With Dementia ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact

Abstract For older adults to “age in place”, they need to keep engaged and mobile in their communities, whatever their health condition. The impact of age and cognitive decline on community mobility is a growing problem in Europe and worldwide. Engaging in occupations outside home implies being able to get to those places where activities are performed. Yet little is known regarding the types of places visited, maintained or abandoned for older adults with/without dementia. This study addresses community mobility needs through the places people visit, maintain or abandon. People with and without dementia, aged 55+, were interviewed using the Participation in ACTivities and Places OUTside the Home (ACT-OUT) questionnaire across Switzerland (n=70), Sweden (n=69) and the UK (n=128). Results show that people with dementia experience a higher rate of abandonment for more places than regular older adults. Insights about driving cessation and access to travel passes will be presented.

scholarly journals Culture shapes our understanding of others’ thoughts and emotions: An investigation across 12 countries

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
François Quesque ◽  
Antoine Coutrot ◽  
Sharon Cox ◽  
de Souza Leonardo Cruz ◽  
Sandra Baez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Gold Standard ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Cultural Factors ◽  
Cognitive Tasks ◽  
Current Gold Standard ◽  
Gender And Education

Humans have developed specific abilities to interact efficiently with their conspecifics (social cognition). Despite abundant behavioral and neuroscientific research, the influence of cultural factors on these skills remains poorly understood. This issue is of particular importance as most cognitive tasks are developed in highly specific contexts, not representative of what is encountered by the world’s population. Through a large international and multi-site study, we assessed core social cognition aspects using current gold-standard tasks in 587 participants from 12 countries. Age, gender, and education were found to impact emotion recognition as well as the ability to infer mental states. After controlling for these factors, differences between countries accounted for more than 20% of the variance on both abilities. Importantly, it was possible to isolate cultural from linguistic impacts, which classically constitute a major limitation. We suggest important methodological shifts to better represent social cognition at the fundamental and the clinical levels.

scholarly journals Neural mechanisms tracking popularity in real-world social networks

2015 ◽  
Vol 112 (49) ◽  
pp. 15072-15077 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noam Zerubavel ◽  
Peter S. Bearman ◽  
Jochen Weber ◽  
Kevin N. Ochsner
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Prefrontal Cortex ◽  
Social Cognition ◽  
Real World ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Temporoparietal Junction ◽  
Enhanced Sensitivity ◽  
The Face ◽  
Group Members ◽  
Group Member

Differences in popularity are a key aspect of status in virtually all human groups and shape social interactions within them. Little is known, however, about how we track and neurally represent others’ popularity. We addressed this question in two real-world social networks using sociometric methods to quantify popularity. Each group member (perceiver) viewed faces of every other group member (target) while whole-brain functional MRI data were collected. Independent functional localizer tasks were used to identify brain systems supporting affective valuation (ventromedial prefrontal cortex, ventral striatum, amygdala) and social cognition (dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, precuneus, temporoparietal junction), respectively. During the face-viewing task, activity in both types of neural systems tracked targets’ sociometric popularity, even when controlling for potential confounds. The target popularity–social cognition system relationship was mediated by valuation system activity, suggesting that observing popular individuals elicits value signals that facilitate understanding their mental states. The target popularity–valuation system relationship was strongest for popular perceivers, suggesting enhanced sensitivity to differences among other group members’ popularity. Popular group members also demonstrated greater interpersonal sensitivity by more accurately predicting how their own personalities were perceived by other individuals in the social network. These data offer insights into the mechanisms by which status guides social behavior.

Hearing and Cognitive Aging

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Kathleen Pichora-Fuller
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Cognitive Decline ◽  
Cognitive Aging ◽  
Brain Plasticity ◽  
Everyday Functioning ◽  
Ongoing Research ◽  
People With Dementia ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Sensory Motor

Age-related hearing loss is heterogeneous. Multiple causes can damage the auditory system from periphery to cortex. There can be changes in thresholds for detecting sound and/or in the perception of supra-threshold sounds. Influenced by trends in neuroscience and gerontology, research has shifted from a relatively narrow modality-specific focus to a broader interest in how auditory aging interacts with other domains of aging. The importance of the connection between sensory and cognitive aging was reported based on findings from the Berlin Aging Study in the mid-1990s. Of the age-related sensory and motor declines that become more prevalent with age, hearing loss is the most common, and it is the most promising as an early marker for risk of cognitive decline and as a potentially modifiable mid-life risk factor for dementia. Hearing loss affects more than half of the population by 70 years of age and about 80% of people over 80 years of age. It is more prevalent in people with dementia than in peers with normal cognition. People with hearing loss can be up to five times more likely to develop dementia compared to those with normal hearing. Evidence from cross-sectional studies has confirmed significant correlations between hearing loss and cognitive decline in older adults. Longitudinal studies have demonstrated that hearing loss is associated with incident cognitive decline and dementia. Various biological, psychological, and social mechanisms have been hypothesized to account for these associations, but the causes remain unproven. Nevertheless, it is widely believed that there is a meaningful interface among sensory, motor, and cognitive dysfunctions in aging, with implications for issues spanning brain plasticity to quality of life. Experimental research investigating sensory-motor-cognitive interactions provides insights into how age-related declines in these domains may be exacerbated or compensated. Ongoing research on auditory aging and how it interfaces with cognitive aging is expected to increase knowledge of the neuroscience of aging, provide insights into how to optimize the everyday functioning of older adults, and inspire innovations in clinical practice and social policy.

Interpreting cognitive decline in the face of cognitive reserve

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Bialystok ◽  
John A. E. Anderson ◽  
John G. Grundy
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Cognitive Decline ◽  
Brain Structure ◽  
Cognitive Reserve ◽  
Cognitive Status ◽  
Cognitive Level ◽  
The Face

Evaluation of the cognitive level of older adults, including decisions about meeting clinical thresholds for dementia, is typically based on behavioral levels of performance. However, individuals with high cognitive reserve will outperform the levels typically associated with their brain structure, providing inaccurate assessments of their status. We define cognitive reserve as the relation between brain integrity and cognitive level, and use the case of bilingualism as a source of cognitive reserve to illustrate how information from only one can distort the interpretation of the individual’s cognitive status.

Activity Engagement in Cognitive Aging: A Review of the Evidence

2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yvonne Rogalski ◽  
Muriel Quintana
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Cognitive Decline ◽  
Cognitive Aging ◽  
Social Activity ◽  
Current Evidence ◽  
Omega 3 ◽  
Neuroprotective Effects ◽  
Activity Engagement ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Age Related Cognitive Decline

The population of older adults is rapidly increasing, as is the number and type of products and interventions proposed to prevent or reduce the risk of age-related cognitive decline. Advocacy and prevention are part of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s (ASHA’s) scope of practice documents, and speech-language pathologists must have basic awareness of the evidence contributing to healthy cognitive aging. In this article, we provide a brief overview outlining the evidence on activity engagement and its effects on cognition in older adults. We explore the current evidence around the activities of eating and drinking with a discussion on the potential benefits of omega-3 fatty acids, polyphenols, alcohol, and coffee. We investigate the evidence on the hypothesized neuroprotective effects of social activity, the evidence on computerized cognitive training, and the emerging behavioral and neuroimaging evidence on physical activity. We conclude that actively aging using a combination of several strategies may be our best line of defense against cognitive decline.

Inefficient Encoding as an Explanation for Age-Related Deficits in Recollection-Based Processing

2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 148-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Friedman ◽  
Ray Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Young Adults ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Brain Regions ◽  
Semantic Retrieval ◽  
Age Related ◽  
The Face ◽  
Episodic Memories

A cardinal feature of aging is a decline in episodic memory (EM). Nevertheless, there is evidence that some older adults may be able to “compensate” for failures in recollection-based processing by recruiting brain regions and cognitive processes not normally recruited by the young. We review the evidence suggesting that age-related declines in EM performance and recollection-related brain activity (left-parietal EM effect; LPEM) are due to altered processing at encoding. We describe results from our laboratory on differences in encoding- and retrieval-related activity between young and older adults. We then show that, relative to the young, in older adults brain activity at encoding is reduced over a brain region believed to be crucial for successful semantic elaboration in a 400–1,400-ms interval (left inferior prefrontal cortex, LIPFC; Johnson, Nessler, & Friedman, 2013 ; Nessler, Friedman, Johnson, & Bersick, 2007 ; Nessler, Johnson, Bersick, & Friedman, 2006 ). This reduced brain activity is associated with diminished subsequent recognition-memory performance and the LPEM at retrieval. We provide evidence for this premise by demonstrating that disrupting encoding-related processes during this 400–1,400-ms interval in young adults affords causal support for the hypothesis that the reduction over LIPFC during encoding produces the hallmarks of an age-related EM deficit: normal semantic retrieval at encoding, reduced subsequent episodic recognition accuracy, free recall, and the LPEM. Finally, we show that the reduced LPEM in young adults is associated with “additional” brain activity over similar brain areas as those activated when older adults show deficient retrieval. Hence, rather than supporting the compensation hypothesis, these data are more consistent with the scaffolding hypothesis, in which the recruitment of additional cognitive processes is an adaptive response across the life span in the face of momentary increases in task demand due to poorly-encoded episodic memories.

Cognitive Flexibility Difficulties Predict Cognitive Decline in Older Adults

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsay R. Clark ◽  
Eric M. Fine ◽  
Gali H. Weissberger ◽  
David P. Salmon ◽  
Dean C. Delis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Cognitive Decline ◽  
Cognitive Flexibility

Cognición social en niños con trastorno por déficit de atención con hiperactividad: una revisión narrativa de la literatura

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-58
Author(s):  
Ma. Guillermina Yáñez-Téllez ◽  
Daniel Hernández-Torres
Keyword(s):  
Social Cognition ◽  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Pragmatic Language ◽  
Affective Prosody ◽  
Palabras Clave

Los niños con trastorno por déficit de atención con hiperactividad (TDAH) presentan problemas en la interacción social, los cuales pueden ser atribuidos a deficiencias en la cognición social (CS), no obstante, esta función ha sido poco estudiada en esta población. El objetivo de este trabajo fue realizar una revisión de la literatura de los últimos 18 años acerca de la CS en niños con TDAH, en los subdominios de teoría de la mente, reconocimiento de emociones en rostros, lenguaje pragmático y prosodia afectiva. Se realizó una búsqueda en las bases de datos PubMed y Scopus, combinando las siguientes palabras clave: “ADHD”, “social cognition”, “theory of mind”, “emotion recognition”, “pragmatic language” y “affective prosody”. Se seleccionaron artículos desde el 2000 hasta el 2018. El reconocimiento de emociones en rostros es el déficit en CS más reportado, encontrándose fallas en la comprensión de gestos de miedo, tristeza, felicidad y enojo, aunque no de manera consistente. Asimismo, se reportan deficiencias en la teoría de la mente, principalmente en la referencia social, entendimiento de emociones básicas, metarrepresentaciones, inferencias de segundo orden y comprensión de juicios sociales complejos.

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