Effects of Age on the Cognitive ERPD/Cardiac Wave Effect

年龄对认知 ERPD/心动波效应的影响

• 批准号: 7817025
• 负责人: DAVID FRIEDMAN
• 金额: $ 54.03万
• 依托单位: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY HEALTH SCIENCES
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 1986
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1986-05-01 至 2014-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7817025
• 关键词: Accounting; Adult; Aged, 80 and over; Aging; Anterior; Brain; Brain region; Cardiac; Cognition; Cognitive; Cognitive Therapy; Cognitive aging; Data; Development; Educational Status; Elderly; Enabling Factors; Episodic memory; Financial compensation; Functional disorder; Glossary; Goals; Impaired cognition; Individual; Individual Differences; Inferior; Intervention; Lead; Left; Life; Link; Measures; Medial; Mediating; Memory; Mental Processes; Nature; Occupational; Participant; Pattern; Performance; Persons; Prefrontal Cortex; Process; Proxy; Public Health; Recruitment Activity; Research; Retrieval; Role; Sampling; Series; Socioeconomic Status; Source; Specific qualifier value; Staging; Task Performances; Testing; Time; age effect; age related; aging mind; base; cingulate cortex; cognitive control; cognitive function; cognitive reserve; density; executive function; hemodynamics; memory process; normal aging; public health relevance; relating to nervous system; remediation; young adult

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Normal aging results in declines in a variety of cognitive domains, including executive-control and mnemonic processes, which are critical for successfully performing many everyday tasks. The fact that these declines are not uniform across persons suggests that the rate of decline is potentially alterable. Therefore, identifying the factors that enable some elders to preserve their cognitive function is an important goal of cognitive aging research. Hemodynamic evidence suggests that some aging individuals may be able to deal with declines by "compensating," i.e., recruiting brain regions and presumably mental processes not used by young adults. However, the compensation hypothesis is frequently invoked on a post hoc basis and is, therefore, vague in terms of which persons need to compensate, which conditions and tasks elicit compensation and the nature of the processes that are engaged. Therefore, to enable a better understanding of individual differences, we use the Cognitive Reserve hypothesis, which posits that reserve factors (measured by proxies such as intellectual status, IQ, and socio-economic status, SES) may enable some older adults to withstand the deleterious effects of cognitive decline more successfully than others. Hence, we embed the issue of compensation within the larger domain of cognitive reserve. Thus, the proposed studies focus on providing additional information on both the reason for individual differences in decline and the nature of the cognitive processes recruited when compensatory activity is engaged. The role of cognitive reserve will be assessed by categorizing young and older adults as either low or high on reserve factors (i.e., IQ and SES) and on the basis of their episodic memory performance (low, high). This will help determine whether individual differences in cognitive reserve account better for compensatory activity than individual differences in task performance. To provide information on the nature of the specific cognitive processes underlying compensatory brain activity, cognitive demand, a variable that might lead individuals to compensate at high levels, will be parametrically manipulated. Further, the recording of ERPs during task performance should provide timing information about the nature of these compensatory processes and reveal important information about the stages at which they aid task-related processes. Specifically, a major aim is to test a series of hypotheses that compensatory brain activity during memory formation and retrieval represents recruitment of cognitive-control processes, presumably mediated by the prefrontal cortex, and brought on line to counter age-related decline in brain function. ERP and performance data will be obtained from young (20-30), young-old (60-70) and old-old (71-85) adults, which will help determine the trajectory of age-related declines. By varying the level of cognitive control required in each of five proposed episodic memory tasks and, thereby, the need to increment cognitive-control processes, we will be able to determine which types of individuals within our older-adult samples are likely to produce compensatory brain activity and the circumstances under which such compensation will occur. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE An important goal of cognitive aging research is to understand the mechanisms underlying age-related changes in certain executive-control and episodic-memory processes because these are critical to the successful aging of the mind. This project is aimed at furthering this endeavor by determining which specific executive-control processes contribute to the well-documented, age-related declines in episodic memory. The eventual development of appropriate pharmacological and/or cognitive/behavioral therapies could enable interventions that would aid older adults with mnemonic and/or executive dysfunctions in, at least partially, ameliorating those deficits and living healthier, more-productive lives, an important societal goal.

描述（由申请人提供）：正常的衰老会导致各种认知领域的衰退，包括执行控制和记忆过程，这对成功完成许多日常任务至关重要。这些下降在不同的人之间并不一致，这一事实表明，下降的速度可能是可变的。因此，确定一些老年人保持其认知功能的因素是认知衰老研究的重要目标。血液动力学证据表明，一些老年人可能能够通过“补偿”来应对衰退，即招募年轻人不使用的大脑区域和可能的心理过程。然而，补偿假设经常在事后被引用，因此，在哪些人需要补偿，哪些条件和任务引起补偿以及所参与的过程的性质方面是模糊的。因此，为了更好地理解个体差异，我们使用了认知储备假说，该假说认为储备因素（通过智力地位、智商和社会经济地位等替代指标来衡量）可能使一些老年人比其他人更成功地抵御认知衰退的有害影响。因此，我们将补偿问题嵌入认知储备的更大领域。因此，拟议的研究侧重于提供关于个体衰退差异的原因和当代偿性活动参与时所招募的认知过程的性质的额外信息。认知储备的作用将通过将年轻人和老年人分类为低或高储备因素（即智商和社会经济地位）和基于他们的情景记忆表现（低，高）来评估。这将有助于确定认知储备的个体差异是否比任务表现的个体差异更能解释代偿性活动。为了提供关于代偿性大脑活动的特定认知过程的本质的信息，认知需求，一个可能导致个体在高水平上进行代偿的变量，将被参数化操纵。此外，在任务执行过程中记录erp应该提供关于这些补偿过程的性质的定时信息，并揭示它们帮助任务相关过程的阶段的重要信息。具体来说，一个主要目的是测试一系列假设，即在记忆形成和检索过程中的代偿性大脑活动代表了认知控制过程的补充，可能是由前额叶皮层介导的，并带来了对抗与年龄相关的大脑功能下降的在线。将从年轻人（20-30岁）、年轻人（60-70岁）和老年人（71-85岁）中获得ERP和绩效数据，这将有助于确定与年龄相关的衰退轨迹。通过改变五种情景记忆任务所需的认知控制水平，从而增加认知控制过程的需要，我们将能够确定老年人样本中哪种类型的个体可能产生代偿性大脑活动，以及这种代偿发生的情况。认知衰老研究的一个重要目标是了解某些执行控制和情景记忆过程中与年龄相关的变化的机制，因为这些过程对大脑的成功衰老至关重要。这个项目旨在通过确定哪些特定的执行控制过程导致了有充分证据证明的与年龄相关的情景记忆衰退，从而进一步推动这一努力。适当的药理学和/或认知/行为疗法的最终发展可能使干预措施能够帮助有记忆和/或执行功能障碍的老年人，至少部分地改善这些缺陷，过上更健康、更有成效的生活，这是一个重要的社会目标。