Cognitive Enrichment and Aging: An Ecological Framework

项目摘要/摘要 虽然积极的智力和社会融合的生活方式显示出促进 认知韧性，任何这类效应背后的机制还没有被很好地理解。 重要的是，认知训练对测量认知结果的影响 清楚地表明产生的效果非常有限。同时，智力--和认知能力 健康--表现为相关能力的“积极流形”。因此，科学之谜将是 解决的问题是，在日常生活的生态中，这种正向流形是如何出现在一个 似乎是为了对经验作出狭隘的反应。虽然传统的模型 情报人员认为，正流形反映了一种潜在的构造，即最近的模型 关于智力功能的研究表明，正流形可能来自 相互支持、相互影响(“互惠互利”)。这样的观点也是一致的 神经模型表明结构和功能的大脑网络被重组 (即使在相当短的时间范围内)根据经验做出反应，以支持情报。这样的一个 视图意味着对一个组件的改进可能会增强相关 组件。这还没有在传统的转移评估中得到测试，这些评估检查了 训练对单个时间点的机能测量的影响。我们提出了一种生态 丰富模式，在该模式中，互惠互利在协同认知韧性方面发挥关键作用 随着年龄的增长。我们在一系列基于“逐次浓缩”的实验中测试了这个模型。 我们检查认知技能的改善以及结构上的变化的范式 以及功能连通性，这是先前相关技能培训相关改进的结果。 我们通过考察工作记忆和语言的交互作用来例证这一点 能力。

Project Summary / Abstract While an intellectually active and socially integrated lifestyle shows promise for promoting cognitive resilience, the mechanisms underlying any such effects are not well understood. Importantly, the effects of cognitive training on measures of cognitive outcomes have been clearly shown to produce very narrow effects. At the same time, intelligence – and cognitive health – manifest as a “positive manifold” of correlated abilities. Thus, the scientific puzzle to be solved is how in the ecology of ordinary life this positive manifold emerges in a system that appears to be built to respond to experience very narrowly. While conventional models of intelligence have viewed the positive manifold as reflective of a latent construct, recent models of intellectual function suggest that the positive manifold may emerge out of components that reciprocally support and influence one another (“mutualism”). Such a view is also consistent with neural models suggesting that structural and functional brain networks are reorganized (even on fairly short timescales) in response to experience so as to support intelligence. Such a view implies that improvement in one component may enhance the modifiability of a related component. This has not been tested in conventional assessments of transfer that examine the effects of training on measures of function at a single time point. We propose an Ecological Model of Enrichment, in which mutualism plays a key role in synergizing cognitive resilience with aging. We test this model in a series of experiments based on a “successive-enrichment” paradigm in which we examine improvement in cognitive skills, as well as changes in structural and functional connectivity, as a function of prior training-related improvements on related skills. We instantiate this by examining interactive effects of working memory and language competence.