ENCODING AND REMEMBERING EVENTS ACROSS THE LIFE SPAN

描述（由申请人提供）：老年人来到神经学诊所，他们对自己不断变化的认知状况有各种各样的抱怨。这些症状包括对爱好和活动的兴趣降低，重复故事和陈述，学习如何使用新工具和设备，难以记录今天是什么日子，以及难以记住约会。这些抱怨有一个显著的共同点：它们似乎都与一个人对“现在正在发生的事情”的心理表征有关。最近在认知心理学和神经科学方面的研究已经开始解释人们如何构建这些表征并更新它们以促进感知和记忆。这项研究表明，将正在进行的活动分割成有意义的事件对这些事件的后期记忆至关重要。然而，人们对这些机制如何随着衰老和痴呆而变化知之甚少。本研究的具体目的是解决这一空白：具体目的1：确定有效的事件分割的认知机制。那些能有效分割事件的人与不能有效分割事件的人有何不同？这种情况会随着人的一生而改变吗？拟议的研究将使用心理测量和功能和结构神经成像方法来解决这些问题。具体目标2：评估有效的事件分割对老年人记忆的贡献。在年轻人中，事件分割与更新短期记忆的当前内容和保持长期记忆有关。本研究将运用行为学和神经影像学方法探讨事件分割、在线记忆更新和长期记忆之间的关系随年龄的变化。具体目标3：测试干预措施以促进事件的有效编码。在某种程度上，有效的事件分割有助于记忆，改善事件分割可能会改善记忆。该研究将测试旨在通过促进有效的事件分割来改善记忆的干预措施。这里提出的这项研究都是基于观察者理解和记忆电影和故事的任务，这些电影和故事比典型的实验室材料更接近现实生活中的活动。这些任务与日常对正在进行的活动和对话的理解没有太大区别。这些特征提高了这种对事件感知和记忆的方法可以推广到老年人常见的记忆抱怨的机会。公共卫生相关性：对日常事件的记忆力下降是衰老的常见抱怨之一。最近对年轻人的研究表明，将正在进行的活动“分成”有意义的事件对以后的记忆很重要。这项拟议中的研究调查了思维和大脑是如何进行这种分块的，它是如何随着人们年龄的增长而变化的，以及哪些干预措施可以提高其有效性。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Older adults arrive in the neurological clinic with a variety of complaints about their changing cognitive profile. These include reduced interest in hobbies and activities, repeating stories and statements, trouble learning how to use new tools and appliances, difficulty keeping track of what day it is, and difficulty remembering appointments. Such complaints have a striking feature in common: They all appear to be related to one's mental representation of "what is happening now." Recent research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience has begun to explain how people construct such representations and update them to facilitate perception and memory. This research suggests that the segmentation of ongoing activity into meaningful events is crucial to later memory for those events. However, little is known about how these mechanisms change with aging and dementia. The specific aims of this research address this lacuna: Specific Aim 1: Identify cognitive mechanisms of effective event segmentation. What distinguishes those individuals who segment events effectively from those who do not? Does this change across the lifespan? The proposed research will address these questions using psychometric and functional and structural neuroimaging methods. Specific Aim 2: Assess the contribution of effective event segmentation to memory in older adults. In younger adults event segmentation is associated with updating the current contents of short-term memory and with long-term memory retention. The proposed research will investigate how the relations between event segmentation, online memory updating and long-term memory change with age using behavioral and neuroimaging methods. Specific Aim 3: Test interventions to facilitate effective encoding of events. To the extent that effective event segmentation helps memory, improving event segmentation may improve memory. The proposed research will test interventions intended to improve memory by facilitating effective event segmentation. This research proposed here is all based on tasks in which observers comprehend and remember movies and stories that are closer to real-life activity than typical laboratory materials. The tasks are not too different from everyday comprehension of ongoing activities and conversations. These features improve the chances that this approach to event perception and memory may generalize to the memory complaints common to older adults. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Declines in memory for everyday events are one of the common complaints of aging. Recent research with younger adults suggests that "chunking" ongoing activity into meaningful events is important for later memory. The proposed research investigates how the mind and brain do this chunking, how it changes as people age, and what interventions might improve its effectiveness.