Aging, Neuropsychology, and Cognition最新文献

Aim was to investigate to what extent cognitive functioning differs by three socioeconomic conditions: low income, being without employment, and living alone. A total of N = 158,144 participants of the population-based German National Cohort (NAKO) provided data on socioeconomic conditions and completed cognitive tests. Multivariable confounder-adjusted regression analyses indicated that cognitive functioning was lower in those with low income (b = -0.21) compared to not having low income, living alone (b = -0.04) compared to not living alone, and being without employment (b = -0.09) compared to being employed. An interaction with age indicated that the difference in cognitive functioning was getting larger with age between the income groups and living alone status groups. Accordingly, the three conditions appear independently associated with poorer cognitive functioning. Pathways of how cognitive health in this population group can be improved need to be explored.

Individuals with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), a prodromal stage of Alzheimer's disease and other dementias, show inhibition deficits in addition to episodic memory. How the latent processes of selective attention (i.e., from perception to motor response) contribute to these inhibition deficits remains unclear. Therefore, the present study examined contributions of selective attention to aMCI-related inhibition deficits using computational modeling of attentional dynamics. Two models of selective attention - the dual-stage two-phase model and the shrinking spotlight model - were fitted to individual participant data from a flanker task completed by 34 individuals with single-domain aMCI (sdaMCI, 66-86 years), 20 individuals with multiple-domain aMCI (mdaMCI, 68-88 years), and 52 healthy controls (64-88 years). Findings showed greater commission errors in the mdaMCI group compared to controls. Final-fitting model parameters indicated inhibitory and early perceptual deficits in mdaMCI , and impaired spatial allocation of attention in both MCI groups. Model parameters differentiated mdaMCI from sdaMCI and controls with moderate-to-high sensitivity and specificity. Impairments in perception and selective attention may contribute to inhibition deficits in both aMCI subtypes.

Many older adults report subjective cognitive decline (SCD); however, the specific types of complaints most strongly associated with early disease detection remain unclear. This study examines which complaints from the Everyday Cognition Scales (ECog) are associated with progression from normal cognition to mild cognitive impairment (MCI)/dementia. 415 older adults were monitored annually for 5 years, on average. Cox proportional hazards models assessed associations between ECog complaints and progression to MCI/dementia. Follow-up models included depression as a covariate. Numerous Memory (5 items), Language (3 items), Visuospatial (1 item), Planning (2 items), and Organization (1 item) complaints were associated with diagnostic progression. After covarying for depression, remembering appointments and understanding spoken instructions remained significant predictors of diagnostic progression. While previous work has focused largely on memory-based SCD complaints, the current findings support a wider assessment of complaints may be useful in identifying those at risk for a neurodegenerative disease.

Exercise training has been proposed to counteract age-related cognitive decline through improvements in cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF hypothesis). Research has focused on cognitive domains like attention and processing speed, and one cross-sectional study reported a positive relationship between CRF and language production in older adults. In a randomized controlled trial, we investigated whether these benefits could extend to language comprehension in healthy older adults, and whether bilinguals, for whom language processing is more costly, would exhibit greater benefits than monolinguals. Eighty older English monolinguals and 80 older Norwegian-English bilinguals were randomized into either a 6-month exercise training group or into a passive control group. We assessed CRF (VO2_peak) and language comprehension (reaction times to spoken word monitoring) in first (L1, all participants) and second language (L2, bilinguals only), before and after the intervention. We found that monolinguals in the exercise group (compared to the control group) were faster in comprehension following the intervention. Moreover, this effect was mediated by exercise-induced increases in VO2_peak, supporting the CRF hypothesis. This extends previous cross-sectional research and establishes a causal link between exercise training and speeded comprehension in older monolinguals. However, despite inducing increased VO2_peak, exercise training did not affect bilingual (L1 or L2) comprehension, and bilinguals in both groups were slower after the intervention period. Exploratory analyses suggested that this slowing may be driven by participants with low L2 proficiency, but further research is needed to examine whether bilingual language processing is in fact unaffected by exercise training and its consequent improvements in CRF.

Word fluency (WF) tasks that tap verbal and executive function show deteriorating performance by advancing age. To address the scarcely studied age-related brain correlates of WF, we employed whole-brain voxel-based morphometry to examine gray matter (GM) correlates of semantic and phonemic WF in 46 healthy older adults. Lower phonemic WF score was related to smaller anterior medial temporal GM volume as well as smaller GM volume in the putamen bilaterally. A disproportionally weak score on phonemic WF in relation to semantic WF was associated with smaller GM volume in the left inferior frontal cortex, the right anterior medial temporal lobe, and the right striatum. There were no significant associations for semantic WF. The fact that our temporal and subcortical findings were bilateral and right-lateralized, may reflect age-related compensation by these brain areas.

Creative divergent thinking involves the generation of unique ideas by pulling from semantic memory stores and exercising cognitive flexibility to shape these memories into something new. Although cognitive abilities decline with age, semantic memory tends to remain intact. This study aims to utilize that memory to investigate the effectiveness of a brief cognitive training to improve creative divergent thinking. Older adults were trained using a semantic retrieval strategy to improve creativity in the Alternate Uses Task (AUT) and the Divergent Association Task (DAT). Participants were tested on the AUT and DAT across three time points: before the strategy was introduced (T0 and T1) and afterward (T2). Results showed that the strategy enhances idea novelty in the AUT; additionally, participants that initially scored lowest on the AUT showed the greatest increase in AUT performance. This finding suggests that older adults can use a semantic retrieval strategy to enhance creative divergent thinking.

Emotional reactivity, based on the discrete emotions approach (DEA), is related to opportunities or constraints across development. While prior research suggests sadness to be more adaptive in old age and anger to be more adaptive in young adulthood, there may be facets within these discrete emotion categories that further expand the DEA framework: loss-based vs. failure-based sadness and frustration-based vs. moral violation-based anger. A sample of 49 younger adults (M_age = 20.00, SD = 2.26) and 51 older adults (M_age = 66.00, SD = 4.94) were asked to relive and describe an emotional memory associated with facets of sadness and anger. Emotional reactivity was operationalized through self-report ratings on distinct facet categories. Results revealed a significant age difference in emotional reactivity to moral violation-based anger, with older adults being more reactive than younger adults. No other significant age differences were observed. These findings are discussed in terms of how further distinctions across emotional facets can inform a better understanding of affective experience across adulthood and old age.

The Test of Practical Judgment (TOP-J) has not been thoroughly investigated in terms of its incremental validity. In the current study, we explored whether the TOP-J adds unique and meaningful information to the neuropsychological assessment beyond other executive functioning tests that are often used as proxies for practical judgment. Ninety-seven older adults who were classified as cognitively unimpaired, with subjective cognitive decline, or with mild cognitive impairment completed a comprehensive neuropsychological evaluation. Incremental validity was assessed through hierarchical ordinal regression analysis by modeling the TOP-J (Forms A and B, 15-item and 9-item versions), in addition to widely used tests of executive function, with participant classification/diagnosis as the outcome. The addition of the TOP-J (both 15-item versions) added incremental validity beyond traditional executive functioning measures to predict diagnosis. Including the TOP-J within neuropsychological evaluations of older adults may enhance differentiation of preclinical dementia diagnoses and provide clinically valuable information to the exam.

Aging can impact emotional recognition, affecting older adults' mental health and social function. This study examined how aging affects affective prosody comprehension (APC: understanding emotions through speech) across seven emotions (happiness, surprise, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and neutrality) and its relationship with cognitive function (via the Montreal Cognitive Assessment) and social support (via the Social Support Rating Scale) in 199 cognitively normal older adults. We found that older adults had lower APC accuracy and more errors, often mistaking negative emotions for neutral or positive ones. APC accuracy was significantly associated with social support, and a partial least squares (PLS) cognitive component fully mediated the relationship between the APC component and social support utilization, explaining 61.7% of the total effect. These results suggest that declines in APC during aging are linked to social support utilization through cognitive function, offering insights for interventions to improve social and cognitive health in older adults.

We tested the longitudinal associations between life space mobility (LSM) at baseline and cognitive performance in three domains (memory, reasoning, and speed of processing) over time. Our analytic sample includes 2,690 older adults (mean age = 73.0, 75.9% female) participating in the ACTIVE Study. We used multiple linear mixed-effects models to evaluate whether LSM, measured using the Life Space Questionnaire, at baseline was longitudinally associated with scores on eight cognitive tests and three composite scores across 10 years. In unadjusted models, there were significant main effects of baseline LSM on memory and reasoning domains, and one speed of processing test (beta: 0.019 to 0.055, p < 0.05). All effects were non-significant in adjusted models. Over time, baseline LSM was associated with one memory test score in adjusted models. Greater LSM at baseline is associated with marginally higher cognitive performance but does not appear to affect the rate of cognitive change at a clinically significant level.