Mechanisms supporting encoding of self-referential and emotional information with age

项目摘要 尽管年龄增长会影响有效编码信息的能力，但老年人 能够记住情绪激起的信息和自我参照 比其他类型的信息更好的信息。到目前为止，这些文献已经 相对独立地进行，几乎没有讨论是否有 重叠的机制，支持与 情绪唤醒和自我参照加工。事实上，许多研究已经 建议的唤醒特定机制或自我特定机制可能支持 增强的内存。这项拟议的研究将两种认知老化结合在一起 具有自我参照加工专业知识的研究人员(Angela Gutchess)和 情绪处理(伊丽莎白·肯辛格饰)和一位定量心理学家 结构方程建模和多水平建模方面的专业知识(Ehri Ryu)。这个 建议的研究使用行为、事件相关电位和功能磁场 用共振成像方法检验两个主要假说。首先，有一个共享的 自我指代编码的一套认知和神经机制 信息和情感信息(目标1)。其次，老龄化将保护 征聘这些机制，同时扰乱许多参与的进程 在对中性和非自我参照信息进行编码期间(目标2)。通过将 将认知老化研究的两个领域放在一起，这两个领域传统上是 独立地说，这项拟议的研究可能会为社会情绪提供新的线索 整个成年时期的处理和记忆系统。此外，通过专注于 随着年龄的增长，记忆功能相对保存的区域，建议的研究已经 有可能阐明可以最大限度地利用的机制类型 在成年人的一生中提高记忆力。

Project Summary Although advancing age affects the ability to encode information effectively, older adults remain able to remember emotionally arousing information and self-referential information better than other types of information. To date, these literatures have proceeded relatively independently, with little discussion of whether there are overlapping mechanisms that support the memory enhancements associated with emotional arousal and with self-referential processing. In fact, much research has proposed arousal-specific mechanisms or self-specific mechanisms that may support enhanced memory. The proposed research brings together two cognitive aging researchers with expertise in self-referential processing (Angela Gutchess) and emotional processing (Elizabeth Kensinger) and a quantitative psychologist with expertise in structural equation modeling and multi-level modeling (Ehri Ryu). The proposed research uses behavioral, event-related potential, and functional magnetic resonance imaging methods to test two main hypotheses. First, that there is a shared set of cognitive and neural mechanisms engaged for the encoding of self-referential information and emotional information (Aim 1). Second, that aging will preserve the recruitment of these mechanisms while disrupting many of the processes engaged during the encoding of neutral and non-self-referential information (Aim 2). By bringing together two domains of cognitive aging research that have traditionally proceeded independently, the proposed research is likely to shed new light on socioemotional processing and memory systems across the adult lifespan. Moreover, by focusing on areas of relatively preserved memory function with aging, the proposed research has the potential to elucidate the types of mechanisms that can be harnessed to maximally improve memory performance across the adult lifespan.