Neurobiological mechanisms of aging and stress on prospective navigation

项目摘要 老年人口正在增长，老龄化带来了功能衰退，可能导致丧失 独立，具有重大的财务，健康和生活质量的后果。两个健康的标志 衰老和与年龄相关的疾病是1）记忆和导航缺陷，以及2）神经和认知功能增强 对压力的敏感性然而，这些与年龄相关的变化存在明显的个体差异。这 建议将有助于说明造成这种可变性因素。记忆与导航 缺陷表现在基本的困难，定向到目标位置和规划如何导航到 他们这种面向未来的导航思维依赖于记忆、注意力和 认知过程会受到影响。重要的是，压力可以作用于这些能力及其潜在的 神经机制，并可能强烈影响在许多情况下进行有效规划的能力。 因此，衰老和压力可能相互作用，强烈影响大脑功能和认知， 老年人驾驭日常生活的基本能力。我们必须了解1） 复杂的神经过程，通过这些过程，未来的经历被设想和计划，以及2）年龄如何与 记忆功能和压力反应的差异相互作用，影响这种灵活的思维。 拟议的研究将描述老龄化规划的神经机制，并研究这些机制如何影响老年人的生活。 机制受到压力的影响。它将利用尖端的神经成像和虚拟现实技术， 对压力的实验性操控本研究将联合收割机个体差异测量与 复杂的大脑激活解码技术，提供神经测量，当人们计划， 它们从记忆中浮现出来。目的一是探讨心理压力对老年人的影响 个人对记忆的灵活使用，降低了他们在规划过程中设想未来路线的能力， 增加了他们对不灵活的习惯性导航的依赖。与压力无关，衰老与 人们依赖于基于习惯行为的不灵活的导航策略的程度增加。 目的2将是测试压力和年龄相关的差异，在固有的导航策略相互作用。老年 成年人对习惯性行为表现出更强的固有偏见，压力限制记忆的程度 检索以及因此的有效路线规划可能是意义深远的。 这项拟议中的研究将对与年龄相关的衰老的神经和认知基础产生重要的见解。 记忆和导航，以及压力如何与这种下降相互作用，以深刻影响目标导向，灵活 行为最终，这项研究的见解将为制定改善的干预措施奠定基础。 与年龄相关的认知下降，促进生活质量的改善，并鼓励认知和神经弹性， 衰老

Project Summary The aged population is growing, and aging brings with it functional decline that can lead to a loss of independence, with significant financial, health, and quality-of-life consequences. Two hallmarks of both healthy aging and age-related disease are 1) memory and navigation deficits, and 2) increased neural and cognitive susceptibility to stress. However, there are marked individual differences in these age-related changes. This proposal will help characterize factors that contribute to that variability. Age-related memory and navigation deficits manifest in fundamental difficulties with orienting towards goal locations and planning how to navigate to them. Such future-oriented navigational thought relies on complex interactions between memory, attention, and cognitive processes which are affected in aging. Critically, stress can act on these faculties and their underlying neural mechanisms, and may strongly influence the ability to engage in effective planning in many settings. Therefore, aging and stress may interact to powerfully influence brain function and cognition, and the fundamental ability of aging individuals to navigate their daily lives. It is imperative that we understand 1) the complex neural processes through which future experiences are envisioned and planned, and 2) how age-related differences in memory function and the stress response interact to impact such flexible thought. The proposed study will characterize the neural mechanisms of planning in aging and study how these mechanisms are impacted by stress. It will utilize cutting-edge neuroimaging and virtual reality techniques, and an experimental manipulation of stress. The study will combine individual differences measures with sophisticated brain activation decoding techniques that provide neural measures of when people plan and what they are bringing to mind from memory. Aim 1 will be to examine how psychological stress affects aged individuals’ flexible use of memory, decreasing their ability to envision future routes during planning and increasing their reliance on inflexible, habitual navigation. Independent of stress, aging is associated with an increase in the degree to which people rely on inflexible navigational strategies based on habitual behaviors. Aim 2 will be to test how stress and age-related differences in inherent navigational strategies interact. For older adults who exhibit a stronger inherent bias towards habitual behavior, the degree to which stress limits memory retrieval, and consequently efficient route planning, may be profound. The proposed research will yield critical insight into the neural and cognitive bases of age-related decline in memory and navigation, and how stress interacts with this decline to profoundly impact goal-directed, flexible behavior. Ultimately, the insights from this study will lay groundwork for developing interventions that ameliorate age-related cognitive decline, promote improved quality of life, and encourage cognitive and neural resiliency in aging.