Experimental Aging Research最新文献

Research question: Are semantic impairments in Alzheimer's disease (AD) partially due to deficits in spatial attention?

Methods and results: In a target detection task, both older adults (OAs) and AD individuals were facilitated by valid spatial cues, but only OAs were impaired by invalid cues compared to neutral. In a reading task, spatial cues validly or invalidly cued the location of pictures, which were related or unrelated to subsequent, centrally presented, words. OAs showed semantic priming only after valid cues, whereas AD individuals showed priming after valid and invalid cues.

Discussion: Failure to inhibit uncued locations results in processing of potentially distracting semantic information in AD.

The present study was conducted to investigate the effects of Ocimum basilicum L. (OB) extract on learning and memory impairment in aged rats. Male rats were divided into the following experimental groups: Group 1 (control): including 2 months old rats, Group 2 (aged) including 2 years old rats, Groups 3-5 (aged-OB): including 2 years old rats received 50, 100, and 150 mg/kg OB for 8 weeks by oral gavage. Aging increased the delay to find the platform but, however, decreased the time spent in the target quadrant when tested by Morris water maze (MWM). Aging also reduced the latency to enter the dark chamber in the passive avoidance (PA) test compared to the control group. Moreover, interleukin-6 (IL-6) and malondialdehyde (MDA) levels were raised in the hippocampus and cortex of aged rats. In contrast, thiol levels and enzymatic activity of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT) significantly reduced. In addition, aging significantly reduced BDNF expression. Finally, OB administration reversed the mentioned effects. The current research showed that OB administration improves learning/memory impairment induced by aging. It also found that this plant extract protects the brain tissues from oxidative damage and neuroinflammation.

Introduction: The possible decline of cognitive functions with age has been in the focus of cognitive research in the last decades. The present study investigated effects of aging on conflict processing in a big dataset of a Stroop-inspired online training task.

Methods: We focused on the temporal dynamics of conflict processing in the light of task practice by means of inspecting delta plots and Lorenz-interference curves to gain insights on a process level.

Results: The results indicate a relatively constant increase of cognitive conflict over the course of adulthood and a decrease with practice. Furthermore, the latency of the automatic processing of conflicting information relative to the controlled processing of task-relevant information decreases relatively constantly with age. This effect is moderated by practice, that is, the relative latency of the automatic processing decreases less with age at high practice levels.

Conclusion: As such, practice seems to be able to partially counteract age-related differences in conflict processing, on a process level.

We examined whether framing younger and older adults learning goals in terms of maximizing gains or minimizing losses impacts their ability to selectively remember high-value information. Specifically, we presented younger and older adults with lists of words paired with point values and participants were either told that they would receive the value associated with each word if they recalled it on a test or that they would lose the points associated with each word if they failed to recall it on the test. We also asked participants to predict the likelihood of recalling each word to determine if younger and older adults were metacognitively aware of any potential framing effects. Results revealed that older adults expected to be more selective when their goals were framed in terms of losses, but younger adults expected to be more selective when their goals were framed in terms of gains. However, this was not the case as both younger and older adults were more selective for high-value information when their goals were framed in terms of maximizing gains compared with minimizing losses. Thus, the framing of learning goals can impact metacognitive decisions and subsequent memory in both younger and older adults.

The reported psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and related public health measures included a decline in cognitive functioning in older adults. Cognitive functioning is known to correlate with the lexical and syntactic complexity of an individual's linguistic productions. We examined written narratives from the CoSoWELL corpus (v 1.0), collected from over 1,000 U.S. and Canadian older adults (55+ y.o.) before and during the first year of the pandemic. We expected a decrease in the linguistic complexity of the narratives, given the oft-reported reduction in cognitive functioning associated with COVID-19. Contrary to this expectation, all measures of linguistic complexity showed a steady increase from the pre-pandemic level throughout the first year of the global lockdown. We discuss possible reasons for this boost in light of existing theories of cognition and offer a speculative link between the finding and reports of increased creativity during the pandemic.

Background: Physical symptoms play an important role in late-life depression and may contribute to residual symptomatology after antidepressant treatment. In this exploratory study, we examined the role of specific bodily dimensions including movement, respiratory functions, fear of falling, cognition, and physical weakness in older people with depression.

Methods: Clinically stable older patients with major depression within a Psychiatric Consultation-Liaison program for Primary Care underwent comprehensive assessment of depressive symptoms, instrumental movement analysis, dyspnea, weakness, activity limitations, cognitive function, and fear of falling. Network analysis was performed to explore the unique adjusted associations between clinical dimensions.

Results: Sadness was associated with worse turning and walking ability and movement transitions from walking to sitting, as well as with worse general cognitive abilities. Sadness was also connected with dyspnea, while neurovegetative depressive burden was connected with activity limitations.

Discussion: Limitations of motor and cognitive function, dyspnea, and weakness may contribute to the persistence of residual symptoms of late-life depression.

Background: From an individual's perspective, social frailty may act as a key determinant of social capital, which is essential for meeting social needs and improvement of overall wellbeing. The present study aimed to understand the social frailty and its determining factors among Indian older adults.

Methods: Data from the Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (LASI)-wave 1 was used. For the assessment of social frailty the study proposed a multidimensional Social Frailty Index (SFI) score ranging between 0 and 100 using 17 indicators. Bivariate analysis and quantile regression models were applied.

Results: The study results indicated that on average female older adults (mean SFI = 63.7) are relatively more socially frail than male older adults (mean SFI = 59.0). Further, the quantile regression analysis revealed that at the 10^th, 25^th, 50^th, and 75^th percentiles, female older adults were significantly more likely to be socially frail than male older adults (β = 3.80, p < .01; β = 2.82, p < .01; β = 1.72, p < .01; and β = 2.62, p < .01, respectively). Educational attainment and better economic condition showed a protective effect against social frailty.

Conclusions: Investment to improve geriatric health status and socioeconomic conditions shall be a key focus to reduce social frailty prevalence among the older adults. A specific consideration is needed for addressing social frailty among female older adults.

The objective of this study was to investigate factors related to recurrent falls among older adults attending primary health care, considering the biopsychosocial perspective. A representative sample of 201 older adults were interviewed in three Primary Health Care units randomly selected in a city in southeastern Brazil. Outcome included self-report of two or more falls in the past 12 months. Exposures included personal and environmental aspects, according to domains of International Classification of Functioning of the World Health Organization (ICF-WHO). Recurrent falls were reported by 24.4% of the participants. Associations with depressive symptoms (p = .003), having osteoporosis (p = .031), chronic musculoskeletal pain (p = .020), frailty (p = .013), sleep satisfaction (p < .001), and functional status (p < .001) were found. In logistic regression models, cognitive status, musculoskeletal pain, and functional status were predictors of recurrent falls; however, only sleep satisfaction remained significant in the final model. Strategies aimed at preventing recurrent falls in primary health care should consider assessments and interventions targeting sleep aspects among older adults.

Objective: The current study was designed to examine associations between depressive symptoms and longitudinal declines in category and letter fluency performance in a gender-stratified sample of older adults.

Method: Participants were community-residing older adults (females: n = 289; males: n = 233) followed annually (2011-2018) as part of a cohort study conducted at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. Depressive symptoms were assessed using the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS). Standard forms assessed category and letter fluency performance. Participants were dementia-free during study enrollment.

Results: The presence of baseline depressive symptoms suggestive of subclinical depression was associated with a worse longitudinal decline in category fluency performance in female but not male participants. These associations remained significant when excluding participants with prevalent and incident mild cognitive impairment and incident dementia. Irrespective of gender, letter fluency performance did not decline over time and was not influenced by the presence of depressive symptoms.

Discussion: The present study's results can aid in identification of older adults who may be at greater risk for cognitive decline, and add to the limited literature examining the influence of gender on longitudinal associations between depressive symptoms and verbal fluency performance.

Interoception is the detection of signals that arise from within the body. Interoceptive sensitivity has been found to be associated with affect and cognition among younger adults, and examination of these relationships in older adult samples is beginning to emerge. Here, we take an exploratory approach to determine how demographic, affective, and cognitive variables relate to interoceptive sensitivity in neurologically normal older adults, aged 60-91 years old. Ninety-one participants completed a comprehensive neuropsychological battery, self-report questionnaires, and a heartbeat counting task to measure interoceptive sensitivity. Our findings revealed several relationships: 1) interoceptive sensitivity was inversely correlated with measures of positive emotionality: participants with higher interoceptive sensitivity tended to have lower levels of positive affect and trait extraversion; 2) interoceptive sensitivity was found to positively correlate with cognition: participants who performed better on the heartbeat-counting task also tended to perform better on a measure of delayed verbal memory; and 3) when examining the predictors of interoceptive sensitivity in a single hierarchical regression model, higher interoceptive sensitivity was related to: higher time estimation, lower positive affect, lower extraversion, and higher verbal memory. In total, the model accounted for 38% of the variability in interoceptive sensitivity (R² = .38). These results suggest that, among older adults, interoceptive sensitivity is facilitative for aspects of cognition but perhaps disruptive for certain aspects of emotional experience.