Social Memory with Age: Behavioral and Neural Mechanisms

描述（由申请人提供）：本提案使用行为和神经影像学研究来研究与年龄相关的社会情绪记忆变化。先前的行为研究提供了一些证据，证明对具有社会情感意义的有意义信息的记忆是年龄不变的，而对其他类型信息的长期记忆则普遍存在年龄相关的衰退。然而，到目前为止，人们对支持这些影响的认知机制以及社会情感信息如何免受认知衰老文献中列出的认知衰退的影响知之甚少。我们假设社会情绪信息支持相对与年龄相当的社会信息的一般记忆，比如记住某件事是“好”还是“坏”。这种类型的记忆将由杏仁核和腹内侧前额叶皮层的自动参与来支持。在年轻人中，无论任务要求如何，这些区域都会对社会情绪信息做出反应，我们预测它们支持有助于一般记忆的年龄不变的自动过程。相反，我们认为，与一般记忆相比，对情节细节的特定记忆，如对人物的整体印象有贡献的行为，会随着年龄的增长而不成比例地受损。我们预测，与年轻人相比，老年人对详细的社会情感信息的编码会更少，这揭示了在记忆中获得社会信息的特权地位的局限性。具体细节的记忆需要控制过程，由内侧和腹外侧前额叶皮层提供，这些过程会受到年龄的影响。这些研究将极大地促进对以下方面的理解：1)激励性社会情绪条件如何改善老年人的记忆；2)社会情绪条件对记忆的贡献方式如何受到限制；3)衰老如何影响参与社会信息加工的神经区域的反应；4)支持社会记忆的神经区域如何与辅助控制加工的神经区域相互作用。迄今为止，研究衰老对涉及社会情绪信息处理的神经区域影响的少数神经影像学研究主要集中在情绪信息的神经反应上。我们的研究采用了一种新颖的方法，通过关注与性格有关的社会、人际信息的神经反应，这与之前使用的唤起性或明显的情感刺激不同。总之，这些研究的结果将为支持记忆功能随年龄增长的有效方法提供见解，并推进对大脑随年龄增长的相对稳定和变化模式如何影响社会记忆的理解。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal investigates age-related changes in socioemotional memory using behavioral and neuroimaging studies. Previous behavioral studies provide some evidence of age-invariant memory for meaningful information with socioemotional significance, in contrast to the pattern of pervasive age-related declines in long-term memory for other types of information. However, very little is known thus far about the cognitive mechanisms that support these effects and how socioemotional information is immune to the cognitive declines catalogued in much of the cognitive aging literature. We posit that socioemotional information supports relatively age-equivalent general memory for social information, such as remembering whether something is "good" or "bad". This type of memory will be supported by the automatic engagement of the amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. In young adults, these regions respond to socioemotional information regardless of the task demands, and we predict that they support age-invariant automatic processes that contribute to general memory. In contrast, we propose that specific memory for the details of episodes, such as the behaviors that contribute to an overall impression of character, will be disproportionately impaired with age, relative to general memory. We predict that older adults will encode less detailed socioemotional information than young adults, revealing limitations to the privileged status afforded social information in memory. Memory for specific details will require controlled processes, subserved by medial and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, and these processes will be affected by aging. The proposed studies will substantially advance the understanding of: 1) how motivating socioemotional conditions can improve older adults' memory, 2) how socioemotional conditions are limited in the ways that they contribute to memory, 3) how aging affects the response of neural regions that contribute to the processing of social information, and 4) how the neural regions supporting social memory interact with neural regions that subserve controlled processing. The few neuroimaging studies to date to investigate the effects of aging on neural regions implicated in socioemotional information processing focus largely on the neural response to emotional information. Our studies take a novel approach by focusing on the neural response to social, interpersonal information regarding character, which differs from the arousing, or overtly emotional, stimuli that have been employed previously. In sum, the results from these studies will provide insights into effective ways to support memory function with age, as well as advance understanding of how the relative patterns of stability and change in the brain with age contribute to social memory. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Increasing our understanding of how socioemotional information contributes to memory with age will provide insights into how to improve the effectiveness of older adults' memory and decision making. This proposal investigates the ways in which socioemotional information enhances memory and engages neural resources, but also explores the limitations to these benefits. While general memory and its neural correlates may be relatively preserved with age, breakdowns in specific memory could leave older adults vulnerable to fraud and deception.