Memory for verbal and spatial information as a function of age

The present study investigated whether there is a differential decline with age in verbal and spatial memory, by measuring the ability of 24 young (mean age =18.8) and 24 elderly (mean age = 69.5) subjects to remember verbal and spatial information under identical task conditions. Subjects recalled either the identities or spatial locations of seven letters arranged randomly within a 5 × 5 grid. To determine whether subjects actually encoded the verbal and spatial characteristics of the array differently, verbal and spatial interference tasks were administered during the retention interval. Results showed that the memory decrement in the elderly was not greater for the spatial aspects of the stimulus array than for its verbal aspects. Thus, there was no evidence for a greater decline with age in spatial memory than in verbal memory. Limited support was found for the utility of the selective interference paradigm to demonstrate separate and independent verbal and spatial memory codes.     

The Effects of Age on Processing and Storage in Working Memory Span Tasks and Reading Comprehension

Background/Study Context: Declines in verbal working memory span task performance have been associated with deficits in the language processing abilities of healthy older adults, but it is unclear how storage and processing contribute to this relationship. Moreover, recent studies of the psychometric properties of span measures in the general cognitive literature highlight the need for a critical reassessment of age-related differences in working memory task performance.

Methods: Forty-two young (M_age = 19.45 years) and 42 older participants (M_age = 73.00 years) completed a series of neuropsychological screening measures, four memory span tasks (one-syllable word span, three-syllable word span, reading span, and sentence span), and a measure of reading comprehension. Each span measure was completed under self-paced and timed encoding conditions. A 2 (age) × 2 (task type) × 2 (encoding conditions) mixed-model design was used.

Results: (1) Age effects were reliable for both simple and complex span task performance; (2) limiting the available encoding time yielded lower recall scores across tasks and exacerbated age differences in simple span performance; and (3) both encoding condition and age affected the relationship between each of the span measures and the relationship between span and reading comprehension.

Conclusion: Declines in both storage and processing abilities contributed to age differences in span task performance and the relationship between span and reading comprehension. Although older people appear to benefit from task administration protocols that promote successful memory encoding, researchers should be aware of the potential risks to validity posed by such accommodations.     

Spatial versus verbal memory impairments in patients with fibromyalgia

Mounting evidence suggests that individuals with fibromyalgia (FM) have impairments in general cognitive functions. However, few studies have explored the possibility of dissociation between verbal and visuospatial memory impairments in FM. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the asymmetrical impairment of cognitive functions between verbal and visuospatial memory and between short-term and long-term memory. Neuropsychological assessments were carried out on 23 female patients with FM and 24 healthy female controls. Verbal memory abilities were assessed using the Korean version of the Rey auditory verbal learning test (KAVLT) and digit span task, and visuospatial memory abilities were assessed using the Korean version of the Rey complex figure test (KCFT) and spatial span task. The analysis of covariance was used to assess group differences in performance on cognitive tests after controlling for depression. The two groups did not significantly differ in terms of age, years of education, or in their estimated verbal and performance IQ, but FM patients reported more severe depressive symptoms than did controls on the Beck depression inventory. Significant group differences were found in immediate and delayed recall on the KCFT (F _1,44 = 6.49, p = 0.014 and F _1,44 = 6.96, p = 0.011, respectively), whereas no difference was found in immediate and delayed recall on the KAVLT. In terms of short-term memory, neither the digit span task nor spatial span task showed any difference between groups, regardless of whether repetition was forward or backward. These findings suggest that spatial memory abilities may be more impaired than verbal memory abilities in patients with FM.     

The decline of verbal and visuospatial working memory across the adult life span

It has been well established that working memory abilities decrease with advancing age; however, the specific time point in the adult life span at which this deficit begins and the rate at which it advances are still controversial. There is no agreement on whether working memory declines equally for visuospatial and verbal information, and the literature disagrees on how task difficulty may influence this decay. We addressed these questions in a lifespan sample of 1,500 participants between 21 and 80 years old. The n-back task was used, with letters and circles presented at different positions around an imaginary circle, to evaluate working memory in the verbal and visuospatial domains, respectively. The participants’ task was to judge whether the current stimulus matched a stimulus that was shown n trials prior. Both domains were evaluated in two levels of difficulty: 1-back and 2-back. The comparison across decades showed that discrimination in the visuospatial and 1-back tasks started to decline earlier in women than in men; however, discrimination was equal between the sexes in the verbal and 2-back tasks. Performance on tasks in the visuospatial domain exhibited more pronounced decline than in those in the verbal domain. The rate of decline in working memory accuracy was superior in 2-back tasks than in 1-back tasks, independent of the domain. These results revealed that the effects of aging on working memory are less dependent on the type of information and more reliant on the resources demanded by the task.Key words: Aging, Verbal working memory, Visuospatial working memory, Domain, Difficulty, Sex differences     

Memory for drug-related visual stimuli in young adult,cocaine-dependent polydrug users

Background and objectives: Implicit (unconscious) and explicit (conscious) memory associations with drugs have been examined primarily using verbal cues. However, drug seeking, drug use behaviors, and relapse in chronic cocaine and other drug users are frequently triggered by viewing substance-related visual cues in the environment. We thus examined implicit and explicit memory for drug picture cues to understand the relative extent to which conscious and unconscious memory facilitation of visual drug cues occurs during cocaine dependence. Methods: Memory for drug-related and neutral picture cues was assessed in 14 inpatient cocaine-dependent polydrug users and a comparison group of 21 young adults with limited drug experience (n?=?35). Participants completed picture cue exposure, free recall and recognition tasks to assess explicit memory, and a repetition priming task to assess implicit memory. Results: Drug cues, compared to neutral cues, were better explicitly recalled and implicitly primed, and especially so in the cocaine group. In contrast, neutral cues were better explicitly recognized, and especially in the control group. Conclusion: Certain forms of explicit and implicit memory for drug cues were enhanced in cocaine users compared to controls when memory was tested a short time following cue exposure. Enhanced unconscious memory processing of drug cues in chronic cocaine users may be a behavioral manifestation of heightened drug cue salience that supports drug seeking and taking. There may be value in expanding intervention techniques to utilize cocaine users’ implicit memory system.     

The effects of mild diastolic hypertension on the results of tests of cognitive function in adults 22 to 59 years of age

Objective:To test the hypothesis that mild diastolic hypertension (90 to 104 mm Hg) may induce asymptomatic impairment of cognitive function. Design:Cross-sectional. Setting:Community participants recruited to a university-based ambulatory care center. Participants:Three hundred twelve men and women with untreated essential hypertension and 47 normotensive subjects, 22 to 59 years of age. Measurements and main results:Cognitive function tests measured reaction time to and accuracy in interpreting predetermined visual stimuli, the ability to acquire, reproduce, and change a set of arbitrary stimulus — response associations, and memory and learning of verbal information. These tests were selected to detect subtle differences in performances as opposed to differentiating neurologically normal persons from brain-damaged persons. After controlling for age, gender, and education, results showed that there was no significant difference between the normotensive and hypertensive subjects in two measures of reaction time to and four measures of accuracy in interpreting predetermined visual stimuli, in the measure of arbitrary stimulus-response associations, or in seven memory and learning variables. Although confidence intervals for the differences between means were wide, clinically significant differences were not likely to be present. Younger age was associated with faster reaction times, fewer errors, and better performance on memory and learning tasks, independent of diastolic blood pressure. Conclusions:The few detectable effects of untreated mild hypertension on cognitive function reported in the literature may be due to chance and are of questionable clinical significance. Supported in part by Public Health Service grant No. HL 33920, awarded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Dr. Pérez-Stable is a Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation Faculty Scholar in General Internal Medicine.     

Verbal memory following weight gain in adult patients with anorexia nervosa: A longitudinal study

Background

Patients with Anorexia Nervosa (AN) show a moderate deficit in overall neuropsychological functioning. Since previous studies on memory performance mainly employed cross-sectional designs, the present study aims to investigate changes in verbal memory following weight-gain.

Methods

Verbal memory was assessed with the Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised (WMS-R; ‘logical memory’-story-recall-subtest) and the California Verbal Learning Test-II (CVLT-II; ‘verbal learning’). Included were 31 female patients with AN (18 restricting-, 13 purging-subtype; average disease duration: 5.1 years; average baseline BMI: 14.4 kg/m²) and 24 medication-free normal-weight healthy women adjusted for age at baseline (T0). In a post-treatment assessment of approx. 6 weeks with weight increase (T1), 18 patients with AN and 20 healthy women were assessed again. Group differences in verbal memory (i.e., WMS-R, CVLT-II) were assessed for the baseline comparisons with a multivariate ANOVA and longitudinal data were analysed with repeated measures (RM) ANOVAs.

Results

At baseline, patients with AN as compared to healthy women displayed deficits in logical memory. In the follow-up assessment, patients with AN improved their logical memory significantly compared to healthy controls (p < 0.006). Furthermore, groups did not differ in verbal learning neither before nor after inpatient treatment.

Conclusions

Enhanced logical memory in patients with AN following weight-gain is probably due to the impaired memory as compared to healthy controls at T0. A survivorship bias could explain the improved memory performance in longitudinal data in contrast to cross-sectional studies. Patients with AN with poorer memory performance before inpatient treatment are at higher risk to drop out and need support.     

Working Memory Functions in Healthy Elderly People: The Impact of Institutionalization and Advancing Age on Mnestic Efficiency

In nonpathological elders, cognitive decline is more evident by middle age and depends on different factors, such as speed of processing, nature of the task (i.e., storing versus processing), and type of stimuli (i.e., verbal versus visual and spatial) to be recalled. The present study aimed to investigate the impact of age and environmental factors (i.e., retirement home versus one's own home) on visuo-spatial working memory functions of healthy elderly (73 to 81 years old) and very old participants (83 to 90 years old). Results showed that visuo-spatial working memory processes in the institutionalized sample were comparable with those in free-living participants. A differential age effect was more evident for mnestic tasks involving the manipulation of stimuli.     

Neuropsychological comparisons of cocaine versus methamphetamine users: A research synthesis and meta-analysis

Background: Previous meta-analytical research examining cocaine and methamphetamine separately suggests potentially different neuropsychological profiles associated with each drug. In addition, neuroimaging studies point to distinct structural changes that might underlie differences in neuropsychological functioning. Objectives: This meta-analysis compared the effect sizes identified in cocaine versus methamphetamine studies across 15 neuropsychological domains. Method: Investigators searched and coded the literature examining the neuropsychological deficits associated with a history of either cocaine or methamphetamine use. A total of 54 cocaine and 41 methamphetamine studies were selected, yielding sample sizes of 1,718 and 1,297, respectively. Moderator analyses were conducted to compare the two drugs across each cognitive domain. Results: Data revealed significant differences between the two drugs. Specifically, studies of cocaine showed significantly larger effect-size estimates (i.e., poorer performance) in verbal working memory when compared to methamphetamine. Further, when compared to cocaine, methamphetamine studies demonstrated significantly larger effect sizes in delayed contextual verbal memory and delayed visual memory. Conclusion: Overall, cocaine and methamphetamine users share similar neuropsychological profiles. However, cocaine appears to be more associated with working memory impairments, which are typically frontally mediated, while methamphetamine appears to be more associated with memory impairments that are linked with temporal and parietal lobe dysfunction.     

The Effect of Prior Task Success on Older Adults’ Memory Performance: Examining the Influence of Different Types of Task Success

Background/Study Context: Negative aging stereotypes can lead older adults to perform poorly on memory tests. Yet, memory performance can be improved if older adults have a single successful experience on a cognitive test prior to participating in a memory experiment (Geraci & Miller, 2013, Psychology and Aging, 28, 340–345). The current study examined the effects of different types of prior task experience on subsequent memory performance.

Methods: Before participating in a verbal free recall experiment, older adults in Experiment 1 successfully completed either a verbal or a visual cognitive task or no task. In Experiment 2, they successfully completed either a motor task or no task before participating in the free recall experiment.

Results: Results from Experiment 1 showed that relative to control (no prior task), participants who had prior success, either on a verbal or a visual task, had better subsequent recall performance. Experiment 2 showed that prior success on a motor task, however, did not lead to a later memory advantage relative to control.

Conclusion: These findings demonstrate that older adults’ memory can be improved by a successful prior task experience so long as that experience is in a cognitive domain.     

Selective interference with verbal and spatial working memory in young and older adults.

Young and older adults were administered digit and location memory span tasks with and without verbal and spatial secondary tasks. Age differences were greater in location span than in digit span; however, there were no age differences in either the magnitude or pattern of effects of secondary tasks. There were also no age differences in the effects of secondary tasks on a combined (digit and location) task. On the digit and location span tasks, both young and older adults showed only domain-specific interference: naming colors selectively interfered with memory for digits, leaving memory for locations unaffected; pointing to matching colors selectively interfered with memory for locations, leaving memory for digits unimpaired. The results of the present study suggest a greater age deficit in spatial working memory than in verbal working memory, but provide no evidence of an age deficit in susceptibility to interference by secondary tasks in either domain.     

Population Normative Data for the CERAD Word List and Victoria Stroop Test in Younger- and Middle-Aged Adults: Cross-Sectional Analyses from the Framingham Heart Study

Background/Study Context: To provide baseline normative data on tests of verbal memory and executive function for nondemented younger- and middle-aged adults.

Methods: The Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer’s Disease word list memory task (CERAD-WL) and Victoria Stroop Test (VST) were administered to 3362 Framingham Heart Study (FHS) volunteer participants aged 24–78 years. Analyses of the effects of age, gender, and education were conducted. Normative data on traditional measures and error responses are reported for each test.

Results: Traditional measures were significantly associated with both age and education in this cohort. Error responses also evidenced significant age and education effects.

Conclusion: These data provide a normative comparison for assessment of verbal memory and executive functioning capabilities in younger- and middle-aged adults and may be utilized as a tool for preclinical studies of disease in this population.     

Effects of Diabetic Ketoacidosis on Visual and Verbal Neurocognitive Function in Young Patients Presenting with New-Onset Type 1 Diabetes

Objective:To evaluate the effects of diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) on neurocognitive functions in children and adolescents presenting with new-onset type 1 diabetes.Methods:Newly diagnosed patients were divided into two groups: those with DKA and those without DKA (non-DKA). Following metabolic stabilization, the patients took a mini-mental status exam prior to undergoing a baseline battery of cognitive tests that evaluated visual and verbal cognitive tasks. Follow-up testing was performed 8-12 weeks after diagnosis. Patients completed an IQ test at follow-up.Results:There was no statistical difference between the DKA and non-DKA groups neither in alertness at baseline testing nor in an IQ test at follow-up. The DKA group had significantly lower baseline scores than the non-DKA group for the visual cognitive tasks of design recognition, design memory and the composite visual memory index (VMI). At follow-up, Design Recognition remained statistically lower in the DKA group, but the design memory and the VMI tasks returned to statistical parity between the two groups. No significant differences were found in verbal cognitive tasks at baseline or follow-up between the two groups. Direct correlations were present for the admission CO2 and the visual cognitive tasks of VMI, design memory and design recognition. Direct correlations were also present for admission pH and VMI, design memory and picture memory.Conclusion:Pediatric patients presenting with newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes and severe but uncomplicated DKA showed a definite trend for lower cognitive functioning when compared to the age-matched patients without DKA.     

Practice of Aerobic Sports is Associated with Better Spatial Memory in Adults and Older Men

Background/Study Context: Cognitive abilities experience diverse age-related changes. Memory complaints are common in aging. The practice of sports is known to benefit brain functioning, improving memory among other abilities. Introduction of virtual reality tasks makes it possible to easily assess cognitive functions such as spatial memory, a hippocampus-dependent cognitive ability.

Methods: In this study, the authors applied a virtual reality–based task to study spatial reference memory in two groups of men, sportsmen (n = 28) and sedentary (n = 28), across three different age groups: 50–59, 60–69, and 70–77 years.

Results: The data showed that sportsmen outperformed sedentary participants. In addition, there was also a significant effect of the factor age. Hence, older men (70–77 years old) displayed a poorer performance in comparison with the other age groups.

Conclusions: These results support the beneficial effect of habitual physical activity in spatial memory.     

Decoding cognitive control in human parietal cortex

Efficient execution of perceptual-motor tasks requires rapid voluntary reconfiguration of cognitive task sets as circumstances unfold. Such acts of cognitive control, which are thought to rely on a network of cortical regions in prefrontal and posterior parietal cortex, include voluntary shifts of attention among perceptual inputs or among memory representations, or switches between categorization or stimulus-response mapping rules. A critical unanswered question is whether task set shifts in these different domains are controlled by a common, domain-independent mechanism or by separate, domain-specific mechanisms. Recent studies have implicated a common region of medial superior parietal lobule (mSPL) as a domain-independent source of cognitive control during shifts between perceptual, mnemonic, and rule representations. Here, we use fMRI and event-related multivoxel pattern classification to show that spatial patterns of brain activity within mSPL reliably express which of several domains of cognitive control is at play on a moment-by-moment basis. Critically, these spatiotemporal brain patterns are stable over time within subjects tested several months apart and across a variety of tasks, including shifting visuospatial attention, switching categorization rules, and shifting attention in working memory.     

The effects of acute hypoglycaemia on memory acquisition and recall and prospective memory in type 1 diabetes

Aims/hypothesis Global memory performance is impaired during acute hypoglycaemia. This study assessed whether moderate hypoglycaemia disrupts learning and recall in isolation, and utilised a novel test of prospective memory which may better reflect the role of memory in daily life than conventional tests. Subjects and methods Thirty-six subjects with type 1 diabetes participated, 20 with normal hypoglycaemia awareness (NHA) and 16 with impaired hypoglycaemia awareness (IHA). Each underwent a hypoglycaemic clamp with target blood glucose 2.5 mmol/l. Prior to hypoglycaemia, subjects attempted to memorise instructions for a prospective memory task, and recall was assessed during hypoglycaemia. Subjects then completed the learning and immediate recall stages of three conventional memory tasks (word recall, story recall, visual recall) during hypoglycaemia. Euglycaemia was restored and delayed memory for the conventional tasks was tested. The same procedures were completed in euglycaemic control studies (blood glucose 4.5 mmol/l). Results Hypoglycaemia impaired performance significantly on the prospective memory task (p = 0.004). Hypoglycaemia also significantly impaired both immediate and delayed recall for the word and story recall tasks (p < 0.01 in each case). There was no significant deterioration of performance on the visual memory task. The effect of hypoglycaemia did not differ significantly between subjects with NHA and IHA. Conclusions/interpretation Impaired performance on the prospective memory task during hypoglycaemia demonstrates that recall is disrupted by hypoglycaemia. Impaired performance on the conventional memory tasks demonstrates that learning is also disrupted by hypoglycaemia. Results of the prospective memory task support the relevance of these findings to the everyday lives of people with diabetes.     

The Role of Sensory Function in Processing Speed and Working Memory Aging

Background: Sensory function, processing speed, and working memory are considered to be mechanisms that play important explanatory roles in age-related decline of cognitive abilities. As individuals age, sensory function declines along with other cognitive abilities, including processing speed and working memory. Moreover, the relationship between sensory function, processing speed, and working memory, which represent the most basic mechanism, is one of the important issues in the field of cognitive aging.

Methods: To explore the role of sensory function, especially visual function, in processing speed and working memory aging, the present study adopted a 2 (age: young and old) × 4 (visual perceptual stress: high, medium, low, and non-stress) mixed design and explored age differences in tasks testing processing speed and working memory. To generate different levels of visual perceptual stress, test materials were masked with Gaussian noise according to each individual‘s visual function.

Results: The results indicated that age differences in processing speed were not influenced by different levels of visual perceptual stress, while age differences in working memory performance decreased gradually with the increase of visual perceptual stress.

Conclusion: Visual function affected age differences in working memory rather than in processing speed. The common-cause hypothesis and information-degradation hypothesis were applied to interpret the relationships between visual function and processing speed and between visual function and working memory, respectively. Moreover, sensory function may not directly affect working memory function, which was also consistent with a resource decrement model of aging.     

Motivational states activate distinct hippocampal representations to guide goal-directed behaviors

Adaptive behaviors are guided by motivation and memory. Motivational states specify goals, and memory can inform motivated behavior by providing detailed records of past experiences when goals were obtained. These 2 fundamental processes interact to guide animals to biologically relevant targets, but the neuronal mechanisms that integrate them remain unknown. To investigate these mechanisms, we recorded unit activity from the same population of hippocampal neurons as rats performed identical tasks while either food or water deprived. We compared the influence of motivational state (hunger and thirst), memory demand, and spatial behavior in 2 tasks: hippocampus-dependent contextual memory retrieval and hippocampus-independent random foraging. We found that: (i) hippocampal coding was most strongly influenced by motivational state during contextual memory retrieval, when motivational cues were required to select among remembered, goal-directed actions in the same places; (ii) the same neuronal populations were relatively unaffected by motivational state during random foraging, when hunger and thirst were incidental to behavior, and signals derived from deprivation states thus informed, but did not determine, hippocampal coding; and (iii) “prospective coding” in the contextual retrieval task was not influenced by allocentric spatial trajectory, but rather by the animal''s deprivation state and the associated, non-spatial target, suggesting that hippocampal coding includes a wide range of predictive associations. The results show that beyond coding spatiotemporal context, hippocampal representations encode the relationships between internal states, the external environment, and action to provide a mechanism by which motivation and memory are coordinated to guide behavior.     

Relationship between dual‐task performance and neurocognitive measures in older adults with mild cognitive impairment

Aim: The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between dual‐task performance and neurocognitive measures in community‐dwelling older people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Methods: A total of 98 subjects (mean age 74.8 years, 52.0% female) participated in the study. We compared 36 participants with amnestic MCI (aMCI) with 62 participants with non‐amnestic MCI (non‐aMCI) on dual‐task performance as measured by reaction time responses. The relationships between dual‐task performance and multiple domains of neurocognitive functions, including general cognitive function, visual memory, working memory, executive function and processing speed, were examined. Results: Although there were no statistically significant group differences in simple reaction times (P = 0.734), the aMCI group showed significantly slower dual‐task reaction times than the non‐aMCI group (P = 0.012). Using multiple regression analysis, we found that there was a significant relationship between executive function and dual‐task reaction times (β = 0.298, P = 0.006). Conclusion: These results showed that aMCI subjects showed a specific deficit in dual‐task performance compared with non‐aMCI subjects, and poor dual‐task performance was associated with declines in executive function in older people with MCI. Future longitudinal and interventional studies should investigate the use of dual‐task testing with varying levels of cognitive demand in older adults at risk of dementia. Geriatr Gerontol Int 2013; 13: 314–321 .     

Prerequisites for lack of age differences in memory performance

Abstract

Free recall performance of young and old adults was examined in three memory tasks: a) acts carried out by the subjects (subject-performed tasks or SPTs), b) sentences with imagery instructions, and c) sentences. The subjects were presented with the same verbal information in all three tasks. No age differences were observed on free recall of SPTs, whereas typical aging effects were obtained on free recall of the other tasks. This way the data from a previous study of no age effects on SPT recall were replicated. A hypothesis about imagery as a critical factor for the lack of age differences on SPT recall gained no support. Two main concepts were proposed to account for the data: Compensation among the elderly by means of the multimodal and rich properties of SPTs, and a superior ability for a spontaneous recoding of verbal information among young adults. The results were also discussed in relation to a presumption of memory tasks as varying in attentional demands.