scholarly journals Age-Related Frontal Hyperactivation Observed across Different Working Memory Tasks: An fMRI Study

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 351-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Fakhri ◽  
Hajir Sikaroodi ◽  
Farid Maleki ◽  
Mohammad Ali Oghabian ◽  
Hosein Ghanaati

Purpose:To evaluate patterns of activation, convergence and divergence of three functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) Working Memory (WM) tasks in two different age groups. We want to understand potential impact of task and subjects’ age on WM activations as well as most important areas with regard to WM functions.Materials and methods:Thirty-five healthy volunteers completed visual, verbal, and novel auditory WM tasks. The subjects were selected from age extremes to depict possible impact of normal aging. The General Linear Model was used to report significant activations and the effect of age group. Contrasts revealed differences in activation between tasks, and Combined Task Analysis was performed to determine common regions of activation across tasks.Results:Most of the observed differences between the tasks were seen in areas that were responsible for feature processing. Frontal regions were mainstay activation areas, regardless of the utilized stimulus. We found an age-related reduction in activity of visual (in visually-presented tasks) and auditory (in auditory task) cortices but an age-related increase in prefrontal cortex for all tasks.Conclusion:Regardless of the type of the task stimuli, frontal regions are the most important activation areas in WM processing. These areas are also main targets of age-related changes with regard to activation patterns. Our results also indicate that prefrontal overactivity in working memory might be a compensatory effort to mask age-related decline in sensory processing.

NeuroImage ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 357
Author(s):  
Assia Serradj Jaillard ◽  
Marc Hommel ◽  
Jean Luc Roulin ◽  
Chantal Delon Martin ◽  
Jean François Lebas ◽  
...  

2009 ◽  
Vol 15 (6) ◽  
pp. 963-972 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALEXANDRA ECONOMOU

AbstractThe aim of this study was to examine discrepancies between immediate/delayed recall and recall/working memory in middle-aged and older persons by age and education. Participants were 322 healthy individuals from the community who were stratified into three age and three education groups. Immediate and delayed recall distributions of WMS-III Logical Memory (LM) scores approximated normal curves, and LM savings scores showed a significant, but small, effect of age. LM (immediate, delayed) and Letter-Number Sequencing (LNS) discrepancies varied as a function of age and education. The difference between LM and LNS was not significant in the younger and less educated participants, but increased with age in the most educated group, and in the oldest group LNS exceeded LM (immediate and delayed). The results indicate deterioration in encoding and retrieval, rather than storage, with age, and show a differential, but small, effect of age and education on the memory measures. Working memory was resistant to age-related decline relative to immediate and delayed recall in the oldest, most educated group. Delayed recall–working memory discrepancy is relatively stable with age and education and may be a useful index of the onset of memory pathology across different ages and levels of education.(JINS, 2009,15, 963–972.)


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Sparrow

In addition to making decisions about gains and losses that affect only ourselves, often in life we make decisions that benefit others. Research on lifespan changes in motivation suggests that altruistic motives become stronger with age. However, few studies have explored the effect of age on decisions that affect others. The current study used a realistic financial decision making task involving choices for gains, losses, and donations. Each decision involved an intertemporal choice, in which the participant selected either a smaller-sooner or a larger-later option that could affect their bonus payout. Participants included 36 healthy younger adults (M = 25.1 years) and 36 healthy older adults (M = 70.4 years). Both age groups chose more larger-later donations than larger-later losses, but the magnitude of this effect was amplified in older relative to younger adults. These findings suggest that intertemporal choices may be sensitive to an age-related increase in altruistic motivation


2022 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Larry E. Humes ◽  
Gary R. Kidd ◽  
Jennifer J. Lentz

The Test of Basic Auditory Capabilities (TBAC) is a battery of auditory-discrimination tasks and speech-identification tasks that has been normed on several hundred young normal-hearing adults. Previous research with the TBAC suggested that cognitive function may impact the performance of older adults. Here, we examined differences in performance on several TBAC tasks between a group of 34 young adults with a mean age of 22.5 years (SD = 3.1 years) and a group of 115 older adults with a mean age of 69.2 years (SD = 6.2 years) recruited from the local community. Performance of the young adults was consistent with prior norms for this age group. Not surprisingly, the two groups differed significantly in hearing loss and working memory with the older adults having more hearing loss and poorer working memory than the young adults. The two age groups also differed significantly in performance on six of the nine measures extracted from the TBAC (eight test scores and one average test score) with the older adults consistently performing worse than the young adults. However, when these age-group comparisons were repeated with working memory and hearing loss as covariates, the groups differed in performance on only one of the nine auditory measures from the TBAC. For eight of the nine TBAC measures, working memory was a significant covariate and hearing loss never emerged as a significant factor. Thus, the age-group deficits observed initially on the TBAC most often appeared to be mediated by age-related differences in working memory rather than deficits in auditory processing. The results of these analyses of age-group differences were supported further by linear-regression analyses with each of the 9 TBAC scores serving as the dependent measure and age, hearing loss, and working memory as the predictors. Regression analyses were conducted for the full set of 149 adults and for just the 115 older adults. Working memory again emerged as the predominant factor impacting TBAC performance. It is concluded that working memory should be considered when comparing the performance of young and older adults on auditory tasks, including the TBAC.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Sparrow

In addition to making decisions about gains and losses that affect only ourselves, often in life we make decisions that benefit others. Research on lifespan changes in motivation suggests that altruistic motives become stronger with age. However, few studies have explored the effect of age on decisions that affect others. The current study used a realistic financial decision making task involving choices for gains, losses, and donations. Each decision involved an intertemporal choice, in which the participant selected either a smaller-sooner or a larger-later option that could affect their bonus payout. Participants included 36 healthy younger adults (M = 25.1 years) and 36 healthy older adults (M = 70.4 years). Both age groups chose more larger-later donations than larger-later losses, but the magnitude of this effect was amplified in older relative to younger adults. These findings suggest that intertemporal choices may be sensitive to an age-related increase in altruistic motivation


1986 ◽  
Vol 251 (3) ◽  
pp. F399-F407 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. M. Kiebzak ◽  
B. Sacktor

Renal handling of phosphate (Pi) was examined in male Wistar-derived rats, 2-3, 6, 12, 18, and 24 mo of age. We observed a significant age-related phosphaturia [i.e., elevated urinary excretion (UPi V) and fractional excretion (FEPi)] in rats fed a normal phosphorus diet (NPD; 0.5% Pi). Concomitantly, plasma Pi decreased significantly and progressively with age. The mechanism of this age-related decrement in Pi conservation was examined by determining the initial (5 s) rate of Na+ gradient-dependent uptake of Pi in renal brush-border membrane vesicles (BBMV). Pi uptake significantly declined with increasing age. No consistent age-related decrease was seen in the Na+ gradient-dependent uptakes of glucose and proline by the same BBMV preparations, demonstrating the specificity of the Pi transport decrement. Pi transport kinetics revealed a significant age-related decrease in Vmax. No difference in Km of Pi was seen between age groups. These kinetic findings suggest either a decreased number of Pi carriers or decreased turnover of Pi carriers. Elevated parathyroid hormone did not explain the alteration in Pi conservation since urinary cAMP was not elevated in the intact senescent rat, and Pi uptake was not normalized in 24-mo-old rats 3 days after parathyroidectomy. The senescent 24-mo-old rat as well as the young adult 6-mo-old animal adapted to a low-phosphorus diet (LPD; 0.1% Pi) with a striking (greater than 100%) increase in Pi uptake by BBMV compared with NPD. thus the senescent kidney retained the capacity to respond appropriately to a LPD.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


2000 ◽  
Vol 84 (5) ◽  
pp. 711-716 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pascal Grolier ◽  
Yves Boirie ◽  
Evelyne Levadoux ◽  
Marion Brandolini ◽  
Patrick Borel ◽  
...  

The aim of the present study was to assess the influence of age on plasma concentration of α-tocopherol, retinol and carotenoids with a special attention paid to natural differences in body composition. Forty healthy subjects were recruited: twenty were less than 35 years old and twenty above 60 years old. Males and females were equally represented in each age group. Subjects were kept in energy balance and received controlled diets for 36 h. Fat mass and fat-free mass were determined with the180-enriched water dilution technique. Plasma vitamins A and E, and carotenoid levels were determined after 12 h fasting and were shown to be similar in women and men. Plasma α-tocopherol concentration increased with age (+44 % elderlyv.young), and correlated with % fat mass and plasma cholesterol. After adjustment for plasma cholesterol, the effect of age and % fat mass disappeared. In contrast, plasma lycopene level was 2-fold lower in the elderly than in the young group, and was inversely correlated with fat mass. When lycopene values were adjusted for fat mass, the effect of age disappeared. These results suggest that plasma levels of vitamin E and lycopene differed in the two age groups and that differences in plasma cholesterol and fat mass might participate in such an effect. Short-term vitamin intake did not appear to influence plasma vitamin concentrations.


2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Frost ◽  
W. Einar Mencl ◽  
Rebecca Sandak ◽  
Dina L. Moore ◽  
Jay G. Rueckl ◽  
...  

2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis A. Uresti-Cabrera ◽  
Rosalinda Diaz ◽  
Israel Vaca-Palomares ◽  
Juan Fernandez-Ruiz

Objective. To evaluate the effect of age-related cognitive changes in a visuomotor learning task that depends on strategic control and contrast it with the effect in a task principally depending on visuomotor recalibration.Methods. Participants performed a ball throwing task while donning either a reversing dove prism or a displacement wedge prism, which mainly depend on strategic control or visuomotor recalibration, respectively. Visuomotor performance was then analysed in relation to rule acquisition and reversal, recognition memory, visual memory, spatial planning, and spatial working memory with tasks from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB).Results. The results confirmed previous works showing a detrimental effect of age on visuomotor learning. The analyses of the cognitive changes observed across age showed that both strategic control and visuomotor recalibration had significant negative correlations only with the number of errors in the spatial working memory task. However, when the effect of aging was controlled, the only significant correlation remaining was between the reversal adaptation magnitude and spatial working memory.Discussion. These results suggest that spatial working memory decline across aging could contribute to age-dependent deterioration in both visuomotor learning processes. However, spatial working memory integrity seems to affect strategic learning decline even after controlling for aging.


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