scholarly journals Does differential strategy use account for age-related deficits in working-memory performance?

2009 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Bailey ◽  
John Dunlosky ◽  
Christopher Hertzog
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adeline Jabès ◽  
Giuliana Klencklen ◽  
Paolo Ruggeri ◽  
Christoph M. Michel ◽  
Pamela Banta Lavenex ◽  
...  

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.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicola Mammarella ◽  
Beth Fairfield

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.


2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (6) ◽  
pp. 1053-1053
Author(s):  
M Gonzalez Catalan ◽  
C Lindbergh ◽  
A Staffaroni ◽  
S Walters ◽  
K Casaletto ◽  
...  

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.


2015 ◽  
Vol 114 (10) ◽  
pp. 1542-1549 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Shukitt-Hale ◽  
Donna F. Bielinski ◽  
Francis C. Lau ◽  
Lauren M. Willis ◽  
Amanda N. Carey ◽  
...  

AbstractPreviously, it has been shown that strawberry (SB) or blueberry (BB) supplementations, when fed to rats from 19 to 21 months of age, reverse age-related decrements in motor and cognitive performance. We have postulated that these effects may be the result of a number of positive benefits of the berry polyphenols, including decreased stress signalling, increased neurogenesis, and increased signals involved in learning and memory. Thus, the present study was carried out to examine these mechanisms in aged animals by administering a control, 2 % SB- or 2 % BB-supplemented diet to aged Fischer 344 rats for 8 weeks to ascertain their effectiveness in reversing age-related deficits in behavioural and neuronal function. The results showed that rats consuming the berry diets exhibited enhanced motor performance and improved cognition, specifically working memory. In addition, the rats supplemented with BB and SB diets showed increased hippocampal neurogenesis and expression of insulin-like growth factor 1, although the improvements in working memory performance could not solely be explained by these increases. The diverse polyphenolics in these berry fruits may have additional mechanisms of action that could account for their relative differences in efficacy.


2004 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 489-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
NAOMI CHAYTOR ◽  
MAUREEN SCHMITTER-EDGECOMBE

Age-related declines in working memory performance have been associated with deficits in inhibition, strategy use, processing speed, and monitoring. In the current study, cross-sectional and longitudinal methodologies were used to investigate the relative contribution of these components to age-related changes in working memory. In Experiment 1, a sample of 140 younger and 140 older adults completed an abstract design version of the Self-Ordered Pointing Task modeled after Shimamura and Jurica (1994). Experiment 1 revealed that only processing speed and monitoring explained age differences in SOPT performance. Participants in Experiment 2 were 53 older adults who returned 4 years after the initial testing and 53 young adults. A task that assessed the ability to generate and monitor an internal series of responses as compared to an externally imposed series of responses was also administered. Experiment 2 replicated the key findings from Experiment 1 and provided some further evidence for age-related internal monitoring difficulties. Furthermore, the exploratory longitudinal analysis revealed that older age and lower intellectual abilities tended to be associated with poorer performance on the SOPT at Time 2. (JINS, 2004, 10, 489–503.)


2011 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nele Wild-Wall ◽  
Michael Falkenstein ◽  
Patrick D. Gajewski

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tam T. Tran ◽  
Nicole C. Hoffner ◽  
Sara C. LaHue ◽  
Lisa Tseng ◽  
Bradley Voytek

AbstractAlpha oscillations are modulated in response to visual temporal and spatial cues, However, the neural response to alerting cues is less explored, as is how this response is affected by healthy aging. Using scalp EEG, we examined how visual cortical alpha activity relates to working memory performance. Younger (20-30 years) and older (60-70 years) participants were presented with a visual alerting cue uninformative of the position or size of a lateralized working memory array. Older adults showed longer response times overall, and reduced accuracy when memory load was high. Older adults had less consistent cue-evoked phase resetting than younger adults, which predicted worse performance. Alpha phase prior to memory array presentation predicted response time, but the relationship between phase and response time was weaker in older adults. These results suggest that changes in alpha phase dynamics, especially prior to presentation of task-relevant stimuli, potentially contribute to age-related cognitive decline.


Remembering ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 169-188
Author(s):  
Fergus I. M. Craik

Memory performance declines in the course of healthy aging, and this chapter discusses some reasons why this may be so. The author suggests that there is an age-related decline in both processing resources and in cognitive control, and that these deficiencies underlie less efficient encoding and retrieval processes. Age-related memory losses are greater in some tasks than in others, however, and the case is made that losses are relatively slight in situations that involve substantial amounts of environmental support and therefore require small amounts of self-initiated activity. In turn, the inefficiency of self-initiated activities is attributed to age-related deficiencies in frontal lobe functions. Age-related deficits in recall performance (which is heavily reliant on self-initiation) are reduced in a recognition test, which embodies greater environmental support. Deficits were also reduced by the use of pictures as materials, and there were no age differences in the ability to hold high-valued words in working memory. These effects are illustrated by experiments carried out by the author and collaborators.


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