Cognition in Aging and Age-Related Disease

The ways in which cognition changes with aging can vary widely from person to person and from task to task. For many people, aging is associated with relatively little cognitive decline (“healthy” or “successful” aging). For some, memory declines significantly with age but does not prevent performance of daily activities (mild cognitive impairment (MCI)). For others, aging is associated with severe cognitive deficits that impede the ability to live independently (dementia). This article discusses the cognitive changes that accompany healthy aging and the theories put forth to explain them. These age-related declines are then contrasted with the ones that characterize MCI and dementia of the Alzheimer's type.

[1]  Marcia K. Johnson,et al.  fMRI evidence of age-related hippocampal dysfunction in feature binding in working memory. , 2000, Brain research. Cognitive brain research.

[2]  Nick Medford,et al.  Effects of normal aging and Alzheimer's disease on emotional memory. , 2002, Emotion.

[3]  B. Dickerson,et al.  MRI of human entorhinal cortex: a reliable protocol for volumetric measurement , 2001, Neurobiology of Aging.

[4]  D. Bennett,et al.  MRI-derived entorhinal and hippocampal atrophy in incipient and very mild Alzheimer’s disease☆ ☆ This research was supported by grants P01 AG09466 and P30 AG10161 from the National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health. , 2001, Neurobiology of Aging.

[5]  U. Lindenberger,et al.  Relations between aging sensory/sensorimotor and cognitive functions , 2002, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.

[6]  R. Stelzmann,et al.  An english translation of alzheimer's 1907 paper, “über eine eigenartige erkankung der hirnrinde” , 1995, Clinical anatomy.

[7]  P. Baltes,et al.  Emergence of a Powerful Connection Between Sensory and Cognitive Functions Across the Adult Life Span: A New Window to the Study of Cognitive Aging? , 1997 .

[8]  Susanne Scheibe,et al.  Emotional aging: recent findings and future trends. , 2010, The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences.

[9]  F. Craik,et al.  The handbook of aging and cognition , 1992 .

[10]  D. Bennett,et al.  From Healthy Aging to Early Alzheimer's Disease: In Vivo Detection of Entorhinal Cortex Atrophy , 2000, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[11]  M. Johnson,et al.  Source monitoring and memory distortion. , 1997, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences.

[12]  R. Cabeza.  Hemispheric asymmetry reduction in older adults: the HAROLD model. , 2002, Psychology and aging.

[13]  Lynn Hasher,et al.  Working Memory, Comprehension, and Aging: A Review and a New View , 1988 .

[14]  D. Schacter,et al.  On the Tip of the Tongue An Event-Related fMRI Study of Semantic Retrieval Failure and Cognitive Conflict , 2001, Neuron.

[15]  M. Naveh-Benjamin.  Adult age differences in memory performance: tests of an associative deficit hypothesis. , 2000, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[16]  S Corkin,et al.  Cognitive impairments in Parkinson's disease. , 1987, Advances in neurology.

[17]  R. Marois,et al.  Capacity limits of information processing in the brain , 2005, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[18]  T. Salthouse.  The processing-speed theory of adult age differences in cognition. , 1996, Psychological review.

[19]  V. A. Kral,et al.  Senescent forgetfulness: benign and malignant. , 1962, Canadian Medical Association journal.

[20]  M. Mather,et al.  Aging and motivated cognition: the positivity effect in attention and memory , 2005, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[21]  N. Wood,et al.  Genetics of Parkinsonism: a review , 2001, Annals of human genetics.

[22]  N. Schuff,et al.  Magnetic resonance imaging of the entorhinal cortex and hippocampus in mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease , 2001, Journal of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry.

[23]  S. Corkin,et al.  Cognitive test performance in detecting, staging, and tracking Alzheimer's disease. , 1995, Archives of neurology.

[24]  E. Kensinger.  How emotion affects older adults’ memories for event details , 2009, Memory.

[25]  Leah L. Light,et al.  The organization of memory in old age. , 1992 .

[26]  B. J. Casey,et al.  Clinical, imaging, lesion, and genetic approaches toward a model of cognitive control. , 2002, Developmental psychobiology.

[27]  Stephan F. Taylor,et al.  Cerebral aging: integration of brain and behavioral models of cognitive function , 2001, Dialogues in clinical neuroscience.

[28]  Donald G. MacKay,et al.  On the tip of the tongue: What causes word finding failures in young and older adults? , 1991 .

[29]  D. G. MacKay,et al.  Memory, language, and ageing. , 1997, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences.

[30]  D. Schaid,et al.  Apolipoprotein E status as a predictor of the development of Alzheimer's disease in memory-impaired individuals. , 1995, JAMA.

[31]  G. E. Alexander,et al.  Functional architecture of basal ganglia circuits: neural substrates of parallel processing , 1990, Trends in Neurosciences.

[32]  Denise C. Park,et al.  Aging, cognition, and culture: a neuroscientific perspective , 2002, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.

[33]  G. Šimić,et al.  Volume and number of neurons of the human hippocampal formation in normal aging and Alzheimer's disease , 1997, The Journal of comparative neurology.

[34]  Cheryl L Grady,et al.  Changes in memory processing with age , 2000, Current Opinion in Neurobiology.

[35]  Y Agid,et al.  Biochemistry of Parkinson's disease 28 years later: A critical review , 1989, Movement disorders : official journal of the Movement Disorder Society.

[36]  B R Rosen,et al.  Encoding novel face‐name associations: A functional MRI study , 2001, Human brain mapping.

[37]  P. Reuter-Lorenz,et al.  Neurocognitive Aging and the Compensation Hypothesis , 2008 .

[38]  S. Corkin,et al.  Working memory in mild Alzheimer's disease and early Parkinson's disease. , 2003, Neuropsychology.

[39]  Miguel A Hernán,et al.  A meta‐analysis of coffee drinking, cigarette smoking, and the risk of Parkinson's disease , 2002, Annals of neurology.

[40]  S. Ferris,et al.  Age‐associated memory impairment: Proposed diagnostic criteria and measures of clinical change — report of a national institute of mental health work group , 1986 .