Determinants of Individual and Age-related Differences in Attention-modulated Information Selection

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Why can some people remember so much whereas others have the famous memory like a sieve? Recent research, some of which was performed by the applicants, has shown that information selection through attention plays an important role in this matter: subjects who have the ability to ignore irrelevant information and effectively focus on the relevant, have a higher working memory capacity than those who are bad at filtering. In this project we aim at having a closer look at what determines these individual and age-related differences, something that has not been sufficiently studied yet. In Project 1 we ask, whether individual differences in peripheral visual acuity may underlie the performance differences usually observed in covert attention tasks. Project 2 aims to investigate how individuals are able to retrospectively manipulate memory contents by means of attention. In Project 3 we ask which neurophysiological processes determine how precisely and correctly information is stored in memory. Project 4 investigates, whether emotional information is differently selected by individuals and whether this is related to differences in personality and emotionality. Finally, in Project 5 we plan to test whether training of attention and concurrent electric stimulation of attention-related brain areas can improve memory performance. Most experiments are designed as EEG studies, in which we look for neurophysiological correlates of individual differences in information processing. Project 5 employs the method of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a tool for non-invasive neuromodulation. In the long rung the results of these projects will form the basis for intervention studies, in which through improving attention-related information selection memory performance is aimed to be indirectly boosted and stabilized.