scholarly journals The Attentional Boost Effect in Young and Adult Euthymic Bipolar Patients and Healthy Controls

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 185
Author(s):  
Giulia Bechi Gabrielli ◽  
Clelia Rossi-Arnaud ◽  
Pietro Spataro ◽  
Fabrizio Doricchi ◽  
Marco Costanzi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Detection Task ◽  
Clinical Implications ◽  
Healthy Controls ◽  
Healthy Older Adults ◽  
Attentional Deficits ◽  
Attentional Boost Effect ◽  
Bipolar Patients

In the Attentional Boost Effect (ABE), stimuli encoded with to-be-responded targets are later recognized more accurately than stimuli encoded with to-be-ignored distractors. While this effect is robust in young adults, evidence regarding healthy older adults and clinical populations is sparse. The present study investigated whether a significant ABE is present in bipolar patients (BP), who, even in the euthymic phase, suffer from attentional deficits, and whether the effect is modulated by age. Young and adult euthymic BP and healthy controls (HC) presented with a sequence of pictures paired with target or distractor squares were asked to pay attention to the pictures and press the spacebar when a target square appeared. After a 15-min interval, their memory of the pictures was tested in a recognition task. The performance in the detection task was lower in BP than in HC, in both age groups. More importantly, neither young nor adult BP exhibited a significant ABE; for HC, a robust ABE was only found in young participants. The results suggest that the increase in the attentional demands of the detection task in BP and in adult HC draws resources away from the encoding of target-associated stimuli, resulting in elimination of the ABE. Clinical implications are discussed.

scholarly journals Slowed sensory reweighting and postural illusions in older adults: the moving platform illusion

2019 ◽  
Vol 121 (2) ◽  
pp. 690-700 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chesney E. Craig ◽  
Michail Doumas
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Young Adults ◽  
Postural Sway ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Age Group ◽  
Sensory Reweighting ◽  
Perceptual Illusion ◽  
Healthy Older Adults ◽  
Stable Conditions ◽  
Illusory Perception

We investigated whether postural aftereffects witnessed during transitions from a moving to a stable support are accompanied by a delayed perception of platform stabilization in older adults, in two experiments. In experiment 1, postural sway and muscle cocontraction were assessed in 11 healthy young, 11 healthy older, and 11 fall-prone older adults during blindfolded stance on a fixed platform, followed by a sway-referenced platform and then by a fixed platform again. The sway-referenced platform was more compliant for young adults, to induce similar levels of postural sway in both age groups. Participants were asked to press a button whenever they perceived that the platform had stopped moving. Both older groups showed significantly larger and longer postural sway aftereffects during platform stabilization compared with young adults, which were pronounced in fall-prone older adults. In both older groups elevated muscle cocontraction aftereffect was also witnessed. Importantly, these aftereffects were accompanied by an illusory perception of prolonged platform movement. After this, experiment 2 examined whether this illusory perception was a robust age effect or an experimental confound due to greater surface compliance in young adults, which could create a larger perceptual discrepancy between moving and stable conditions. Despite exposure to the same surface compliance levels during sway-reference, the perceptual illusion was maintained in experiment 2 in a new group of 14 healthy older adults compared with 11 young adults. In both studies, older adults took five times longer than young adults to perceive platform stabilization. This supports that sensory reweighting is inefficient in older adults. NEW & NOTEWORTHY This is the first paper to show that postural sway aftereffects witnessed in older adults after platform stabilization may be due to a perceptual illusion of platform movement. Surprisingly, in both experiments presented it took older adults five times longer than young adults to perceive platform stabilization. This supports a hypothesis of less efficient sensory reintegration in this age group, which may delay the formation of an accurate postural percept.

scholarly journals Cognitive aging and verbal labeling in continuous visual memory

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (7) ◽  
pp. 1196-1213
Author(s):  
Alicia Forsberg ◽  
Wendy Johnson ◽  
Robert H. Logie
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Cognitive Aging ◽  
Visual Memory ◽  
Memory Performance ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Long Term Memory ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Healthy Older Adults ◽  
Age Related

Abstract The decline of working memory (WM) is a common feature of general cognitive decline, and visual and verbal WM capacity appear to decline at different rates with age. Visual material may be remembered via verbal codes or visual traces, or both. Souza and Skóra, Cognition, 166, 277–297 (2017) found that labeling boosted memory in younger adults by activating categorical visual long-term memory (LTM) knowledge. Here, we replicated this and tested whether it held in healthy older adults. We compared performance in silence, under instructed overt labeling (participants were asked to say color names out loud), and articulatory suppression (repeating irrelevant syllables to prevent labeling) in the delayed estimation paradigm. Overt labeling improved memory performance in both age groups. However, comparing the effect of overt labeling and suppression on the number of coarse, categorical representations in the two age groups suggested that older adults used verbal labels subvocally more than younger adults, when performing the task in silence. Older adults also appeared to benefit from labels differently than younger adults. In younger adults labeling appeared to improve visual, continuous memory, suggesting that labels activated visual LTM representations. However, for older adults, labels did not appear to enhance visual, continuous representations, but instead boosted memory via additional verbal (categorical) memory traces. These results challenged the assumption that visual memory paradigms measure the same cognitive ability in younger and older adults, and highlighted the importance of controlling differences in age-related strategic preferences in visual memory tasks.

scholarly journals Older adults demonstrate interlimb transfer of reactive gait adaptations to repeated unpredictable gait perturbations

GeroScience ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher McCrum ◽  
Kiros Karamanidis ◽  
Lotte Grevendonk ◽  
Wiebren Zijlstra ◽  
Kenneth Meijer
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Gait Stability ◽  
Kinematic Data ◽  
Healthy Older Adults ◽  
Age Related ◽  
The Right ◽  
Walking Speeds ◽  
Treadmill Belt ◽  
Gait Perturbations

AbstractThe ability to rapidly adjust gait to cope with unexpected mechanical perturbations declines with ageing. Previous studies, however, have not ensured that gait stability pre-perturbation was equivalent across participants or age groups which may have influenced the outcomes. In this study, we investigate if age-related differences in stability following gait perturbations remain when all participants walk with equivalent stability. We also examine if interlimb transfer of gait adaptations are observed in healthy older adults, by examining if adaptation to repeated perturbations of one leg can benefit stability recovery when the other leg is perturbed. During walking at their stability-normalised walking speeds (young: 1.32 ± 0.07 m/s; older: 1.31 ± 0.13 m/s; normalised to an average margin of stability of 0.05 m), 30 young and 28 older healthy adults experienced ten unpredictable treadmill belt accelerations (the first and last applied to the right leg, the others to the left leg). Using kinematic data, we assessed the margins of stability during unperturbed walking and the first eight post-perturbation recovery steps. Older adults required three more steps to recover during the first perturbation to each leg than the young adults. Yet, after repeated perturbations of the left leg, older adults required only one more step to recover. Interestingly, for the untrained right leg, the older adults could regain stability with three fewer steps, indicating interlimb transfer of the improvements. Age differences in reactive gait stability remain even when participants’ walk with equivalent stability. Furthermore, we show that healthy older adults can transfer improvements in balance recovery made during repeated perturbations to one limb to their recovery following a perturbation to the untrained limb.

scholarly journals Quantifying Post-Swallow Residue in Healthy Aging

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (6) ◽  
pp. 1657-1665
Author(s):  
Marie Jardine ◽  
Anna Miles ◽  
Jacqui Allen ◽  
Rebecca Leonard
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Observational Study ◽  
Healthy Aging ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Quantitative Measure ◽  
Healthy Adults ◽  
Clearance Ratio ◽  
Healthy Older Adults ◽  
Swallowing Dysfunction ◽  
Airway Invasion

Purpose Reports are mixed on whether post-swallow residue increases with age. This question was investigated using a quantitative measure of residue in a large cohort of healthy adults. It was hypothesized that post-swallow residue would differ between younger and older healthy adults, and significantly increase in individuals ≥ 80 years. Method In this observational study, 275 healthy volunteers aged 18–99 years underwent videofluoroscopic swallow studies. Post-swallow residue was quantified using the Bolus Clearance Ratio (BCR) for a 20-ml thin liquid barium bolus and 3-cm 3 barium paste bolus. Number of swallows required per bolus and aspiration were also determined as additional markers of swallow efficiency and safety. Results Most BCR values were low, < 0.05 (< 5% of the bolus) for 78% of 20 ml and 66% of paste swallows. BCR values were significantly larger in healthy older adults, although, clinically, the differences are arguably minimal (differences in mean BCR values between age groups: 20 ml: 0.01 [1%]; paste: 0.03 [3%]). For 20 ml, 56% of adults ≥ 80 years performed multiple swallows (oral residue and dose metering) versus 9% of adults 18–39 years. One aspiration event was observed. Conclusions Post-swallow residue was slightly increased in older adults; many individuals ≥ 80 years performed more than one swallow per bolus to achieve this similar level of clearance. This suggests a reduction in swallow efficiency with age without compromising swallow safety. Post-swallow residue that poses a risk of airway invasion should be considered a sign of swallowing dysfunction, not healthy aging.

Aging and Encoding in Memory: False Alarms and Decision Criteria in a Word-Pair Recognition Task

1995 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michel Isingrini ◽  
Roger Fontaine ◽  
Laurence Taconnat ◽  
Agnes Duportal
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
False Alarm ◽  
False Alarm Rate ◽  
Age Differences ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
False Alarms ◽  
Memory Strength ◽  
Decision Criteria ◽  
Age Related

Employing a false alarm recognition procedure with learning of highly associated word pairs, an experiment was conducted to examine the hypothesis of an age-related deficit in the distinctiveness of encoding. The evolution of the false alarm rate and of the C decision criteria was observed across three age groups, young adults, older adults, and older-older adults. The results show 1) no age differences on C decision criteria, indicating that the increase in FA with age is not related to a subject compensation strategy but is probably due to a failure in memory strength, and 2) that older respondents produced significantly more false alarms to distractors related to target items than the young respondents did but that they did not differ in their false alarm rate for unrelated distractors. This finding is interpreted as supporting the hypothesis of a failure with age to encode target items in a sufficiently elaborate or distinctive fashion. For the older-older respondents the data showed an increase in all false alarms indexes, suggesting that the encoding deficit gets worse in late adulthood.

scholarly journals The QuadMax Task: A Novel Parametric Manipulation of Associative Memory Load in Adults Across the Lifespan

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilana J. Bennett ◽  
Corinna Franco
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Associative Memory ◽  
Memory Load ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Memory Deficits ◽  
Memory Deficit ◽  
Age Group ◽  
Memory Errors ◽  
Younger Age

Whereas adults across the lifespan can accurately recognize previously encountered items, they are worse at remembering precisely which items were previously seen together, and this associative memory deficit is exacerbated in older adults. However, the literature is dominated by studies of pair-wise associations, with very few examinations of higher associative loads and none in older adults. In the present study, 190 adults (18-83 years) completed a novel recognition task in which they studied word pairs, triplets, and quadruplets and were later tested on their memory for repeated, recombined, and novel word sets. Results revealed significantly more incorrect responses to recombined sets that increased from pairs to triplets to quadruplets, with older age groups making significantly more of these associative memory errors than younger age groups. Participants also made significantly more correct responses to repeated pairs compared to triplets and quadruplets, but these recognition memory effects did not vary by age group. These findings replicate and extend the paired-associative memory literature by demonstrating that associative memory deficits increase both with demands on binding processes at higher associative loads and with aging. They further demonstrate the feasibility of manipulating and assessing associative memory load using our novel QuadMax task.

scholarly journals Muscle synergy differences between voluntary and reactive backward stepping

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuaijie Wang ◽  
Gonzalo Varas-Diaz ◽  
Tanvi Bhatt
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Neuromuscular Control ◽  
Potential Effect ◽  
Muscle Synergy ◽  
Muscle Synergies ◽  
Limited Effect ◽  
Healthy Older Adults ◽  
Different Populations ◽  
Reactive Stepping

AbstractReactive stepping responses are essential to prevent falls after a loss of balance. It has previously been well described that both voluntary and reactive step training could improve the efficacy of reactive stepping in different populations. However, the effect of aging on neuromuscular control during voluntary and reactive stepping remains unclear. Electromyography (EMG) signals during both backward voluntary stepping in response to an auditory cue and backward reactive stepping elicited by a forward slip-like treadmill perturbation during stance were recorded in ten healthy young adults and ten healthy older adults. Using muscle synergy analysis, we extracted the muscle synergies for both voluntary and reactive stepping. Our results showed that fewer muscle synergies were used during reactive stepping than during voluntary stepping in both young and older adults. Minor differences in the synergy structure were observed for both voluntary and reactive stepping between age groups. Our results indicate that there is a low similarity of muscle synergies between voluntary stepping and reactive stepping and that aging had a limited effect on the structure of muscle synergies. This study enhances our understanding of the neuromuscular basis of both voluntary and reactive stepping as well as the potential effect of aging on neuromuscular control during balance tasks.

Cortisol, ACTH, and cardiovascular response to a cognitive challenge paradigm in aging and depression

1995 ◽  
Vol 268 (4) ◽  
pp. R865-R873 ◽  
Author(s):  
U. Gotthardt ◽  
U. Schweiger ◽  
J. Fahrenberg ◽  
C. J. Lauer ◽  
F. Holsboer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Blood Pressure ◽  
Cardiovascular Response ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Detection Task ◽  
Cortisol Secretion ◽  
Healthy Controls ◽  
Hormone Release ◽  
Depressed Patients ◽  
Cognitive Challenge ◽  
Normal Controls

Aging and hypercortisolism may be associated with alterations of stress-induced hormone release. We therefore studied 20 normal controls of two different age groups (< 30 and > 60 yr of age) and 20 age-matched patients with major depression; baseline ACTH and cortisol secretion (between 1400 and 1700) as well as blood pressure and heart rate and their responses to a 45-min lasting signal detection task (1705-1750) were determined. No difference in basal hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) system activity between young and older healthy controls was noted. The cognitive challenge resulted in an increase in stress-induced hormonal secretion that was greater in the older controls than in their young counterparts. Basal hypercortisolemia and, at baseline, heart rates were higher in depressed patients, regardless of age. Blood pressure was elevated in older healthy controls as well as depressed patients. With the exception of the young depressed patients, all groups responded with an increase of the cardiovascular parameters during stress.

scholarly journals Physically active lifestyle is associated with attenuation of hippocampal dysfunction in healthy older adults

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamir Eisenstein ◽  
Nir Giladi ◽  
Talma Hendler ◽  
Ofer Havakuk ◽  
Yulia Lerner
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Activity Level ◽  
Memory Encoding ◽  
Hippocampal Function ◽  
Active Lifestyle ◽  
Physically Active ◽  
Healthy Older Adults ◽  
Hippocampal Dysfunction ◽  
Cognitively Intact

Alterations in hippocampal function have been shown in older adults, expressed as changes in hippocampal activity and connectivity. While hippocampal activation during memory demands have been demonstrated to decrease with age, some older individuals present increased activity, or hyperactivity, of the hippocampus which is associated with increased neuropathology and poorer memory function. In addition, lower functional coherence between the hippocampus and core hubs of the default mode network (DMN), namely the posteromedial and medial prefrontal cortices, as well as increased local intrahippocampal connectivity, were also demonstrated in cognitively intact older adults. Aerobic exercise has been shown to elicit neuroprotective effects on hippocampal structure and vasculature in aging, and improvements in maximal aerobic capacity (MAC) have been suggested to mediate these exercise-related effects. However, how these lifestyle factors relate to hippocampal function is not clear. Fifty-two cognitively intact older adults (age 65-80) have been recruited and divided into physically active (n=29) or non-active (n=23) groups based on their aerobic activity lifestyle habits. Participants underwent resting-state as well as task-based fMRI experiments which included an associative memory encoding paradigm followed by a post-scan memory recognition test. In addition, forty-four participants also performed cardiopulmonary exercise tests to evaluate MAC. While both groups demonstrated increased anterior hippocampal activation during memory encoding, physically active lifestyle was associated with significantly lower activity level and higher memory performance in the recognition task. In addition, the physically active group also demonstrated higher functional connectivity of the anterior and posterior hippocampi with the core hubs of the DMN, and lower local intra-hippocampal connectivity within and between hemispheres. MAC was negatively associated with hippocampal activation level and demonstrated positive correlation with hippocampal-DMN connectivity. According to these findings, aerobically active lifestyle may be associated with attenuation of hippocampal dysfunction in cognitively healthy older adults.

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