The aging episodic memory and its plasticity: A cross-cultural approach

情景记忆（即学习和记忆具有特定时间和空间背景的事件的能力）障碍在健康老年人和阿尔茨海默病（AD）高风险的失忆症轻度认知障碍（aMCI）患者中表现突出。跨文化研究表明，处于相对个性化、独立文化中的西方人倾向于处理与语境无关的分类信息，而处于更集体主义传统中的东亚人则更关注语境和关系信息（Park & Gutchess, 2006）。然而，对于与文化相关的终身经历如何缓和与年龄相关的情景记忆和神经退行性缺陷，以及这如何反映在相关的神经基础上，我们知之甚少。本研究的主要目的是研究具有文化价值观和实践的终身经历对长期情景记忆过程及其神经基础的年龄差异的贡献，并为健康老年人和a- mci患者开发和验证文化适应性记忆训练干预。更详细地说，我们将使用年龄文化互动方法来探索情景记忆、熟悉和回忆的两个子过程及其电生理相关过程（分别为FN400和LPC）是如何被文化调节的。在项目的第一部分中，我们计划对不同年龄组的文化如何调节对物体和场景的记忆以及对有价值信息的源记忆进行系统的调查。这里将探讨项目和上下文（或来源）是否可以融合为一个统一的表征，并在熟悉的基础上记忆。一个特别的焦点将是文化和年龄如何调节策略检索过程（即检索方向）。在第二部分中，我们的目标是为健康的老年人和aMCI患者开发和验证一种文化适应性记忆干预方案。鉴于在健康老年人和a-MCI患者中，基于熟悉度的统一相对保留（Koen & Yonelinas, 2014），我们预测文化偏好的助记策略训练（即汉语的关系联想和德语的分类联想）将在联想记忆中产生最大的好处，并增强FN400和降低LPC效应。这些发现不仅将为自然（即生物衰退）和教养（即文化经验）对认知衰老的相对贡献提供新的见解。它们在制定针对老年人的有效记忆训练计划方面也具有重要的实践和临床意义，这些计划将改善老年人的生活质量，并预防和延缓两种文化中痴呆症的发作。

The aging episodic memory and its plasticity: A cross-cultural approachEpisodic memory (i.e., the ability to learn and remember an episode with its specific temporal and spatial context) impairments are prominent in healthy older adults and in patients with amnesic mild cognitive impairments (aMCI) who are at high risk for the development of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). Cross-cultural research has indicated that Westerners in a relatively individualized, independent culture are inclined to process context-independent and categorical information, whereas East Asians in a more collectivistic tradition pay more attention to contextual and relational information (Park & Gutchess, 2006). However, not much is known on how culture-related lifelong experiences moderate age-related and neurodegenerative deficits in episodic memory, and how this is reflected in the associated neural underpinnings.The main goal of the proposed research project is to examine the contribution of lifelong experience with cultural values and practices on age differences in long-term episodic memory processes and its neural underpinnings and to develop and validate a culturally adapted memory training intervention for healthy older adults and a-MCI patients. In more detail, we will use an Age by Culture interaction approach to explore how two subprocesses of episodic memory, familiarity and recollection and their electrophysiological correlates (the FN400 and LPC, respectively) are modulated by culture. In the first project part we plan a systematic investigation of how memory for objects and scenes and source memory for valued information are modulated by culture in different age groups. Here it will be explored whether items and context (or source) can be fused to a unitized representation and remembered on the basis of familiarity. A special focus will be how culture and age modulate strategic retrieval processing (i.e. retrieval orientation).In Part 2 we aim to develop and validate a culturally adapted memory intervention program for healthy older adults and aMCI patients. Given that familiarity-based unitization is relatively preserved in both healthy older adults and a-MCI patients (Koen & Yonelinas, 2014), we predict that the culturally preferred mnemonic strategy training (i.e., relational associations in Chinese and categorical associations in Germans) will produce the largest benefits in associative remembering as well as enhanced FN400 and reduced LPC effects.The findings will not only provide novel insights into the relative contributions of nature (i.e., biological decline) and nurture (i.e., culture experience) to cognitive aging. They also have important practical and clinical implications in creating aging-specific and effective memory training programs which will ameliorate the quality of life among older adults and prevent and delay the onset of dementia in both cultures.