Posted on 03/25/2010 6:38:10 AM PDT by decimon
New study shows that preparedness does not improve memory performance in older adults
Milan, Italy, 25 March 2010 - One of the most common complaints among healthy older adults relates to a decline in memory performance. This decline has been linked to an inability to ignore irrelevant information when forming memories. In order to ignore distracting information, the brain should act to suppress its responses to distractions, but it has been shown that in older adults there is in fact an increase in brain activity at those times. In a new study published in the April 2010 issue of Elsevier's Cortex (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/cortex) researchers at the University of California San Francisco have shown that even prior knowledge of an impending distraction does not help to improve the working memory performance of older adults.
Drs. Theodore Zanto and Adam Gazzaley studied 21 adults aged between 60 and 80 years while they performed a working memory task in which they were shown random sequences of pictures containing faces and scenes. From a given sequence, participants were asked to remember either only the faces (ignoring scenes) or only the scenes (ignoring faces). In a second round of testing, the participants were given prior information about which specific pictures in the sequence would be relevant and which to ignore. The participants' brain activity during the tasks was recorded using electroencephalograms (EEGs).
Previous research from this laboratory has indicated that the increase in brain activity in response to distractions occurs very soon (within 200 milliseconds) after the distraction appears. Since there is only a very short amount of time allotted for the brain to identify an item as irrelevant and suppress any further neural processing, it was suggested that older adults might benefit from prior knowledge of the impending distraction. However, results from the new study have proved that this is not the case.
Interestingly, the researchers found that later stages of neural processing (500-650 milliseconds after item presentation) do show signs of suppression, confirming that the "suppression deficit" is related to early stages of neural processing. The findings suggest that a working memory decline in older adults is indeed due to an inability to ignore distracting information, which furthermore cannot be improved with preparedness.
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Notes to Editors:
The article is "Predictive knowledge of stimulus relevance does not influence top-down suppression of irrelevant information in older adults" by Theodore P. Zanto, Kelly Hennigan, Mattias Östberg, Wesley C. Clapp and Adam Gazzaley and appears in Cortex, Volume 46, Issue 4 (April 2010), published by Elsevier in Italy. Full text of the article featured above is available to members of the media upon request. Please contact the Elsevier press office, newsroom@elsevier.com. To schedule an interview, contact Dr Adam Gazzaley, adam.gazzaley@ucsf.edu.
About Cortex
Cortex is an international journal devoted to the study of cognition and of the relationship between the nervous system and mental processes, particularly as these are reflected in the behaviour of patients with acquired brain lesions, normal volunteers, children with typical and atypical development, and in the activation of brain regions and systems as recorded by functional neuroimaging techniques. It was founded in 1964 by Ennio De Renzi. The Editor in-chief of Cortex is Sergio Della Sala, Professor of Human Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh. Fax: 0131 6513230, e-mail: cortex@ed.ac.uk. Cortex is available online at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00109452
About Elsevier
Elsevier is a world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. The company works in partnership with the global science and health communities to publish more than 2,000 journals, including the Lancet (www.thelancet.com) and Cell (www.cell.com), and close to 20,000 book titles, including major reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier's online solutions include ScienceDirect (www.sciencedirect.com), Scopus (www.scopus.com), Reaxys (www.reaxys.com), MD Consult (www.mdconsult.com) and Nursing Consult (www.nursingconsult.com), which enhance the productivity of science and health professionals, and the SciVal suite (www.scival.com) and MEDai's Pinpoint Review (www.medai.com), which help research and health care institutions deliver better outcomes more cost-effectively.
A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier (www.elsevier.com) employs 7,000 people worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group PLC (www.reedelsevier.com), a world-leading publisher and information provider. The ticker symbols are REN (Euronext Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK and ENL (New York Stock Exchange).
I'm not sure what is meant by that but I disagree with the flat statement.
What?
I have some very serious problems with this article. First of all...oh look a bird.
I’ll have to read this later if I remember. The dog was barking.
Squirrel. SQUIRREL.
What was I saying?
Who are you?
Just reading about the tasks confused me.
HUH? I dunno!
Maybe older people have learned the hard way that the things you think are important aren’t always the end all and be all . . . that everything counts.
Everything counts, for what?
What was I saying? I’m thirsty. Is there fresh coffee made?
Concerta! Solves this nicely.
Now why did I click on the ‘Post Reply’ button again?
Would y’all pipe down?! I can’t hear myself think!
Forgot to ping ping.
That's easy for you to say. I, however, believe that....uh...I believe.... that we should...uh..er... .........................what were we talking about?
Click on preview for the abstract.
No !.......:o)
Hmmm..... Red wire or the ... Professor an Mary Ann here on Gilligans Island !
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