Healthy Cognitive Aging

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Healthy Cognitive Aging

• Elizabeth A. L. Stine-Morrow
• Department of Educational Psychology
• Beckman Institute HCII

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Focus of Research Program Optimization of
cognitive functioning through the adult life span

• Rationale
• We are living longer
• Life expectancy at birth in 1970 71 yrs
• Life expectancy at birth in 2005 78 yrs
• Expected life span at age 65 in 2005 83 yrs
• Expected life span at age 75 in 2005 87 yrs
• Shift in demographics toward an older society
• By 2040
• 20 of us will be 65 yrs old
• For the first time in history, more adults gt65
  yrs old than children lt17 yrs
• Because we are older, incidence of dementing
  illnesses is increasing steadily
• To avoid this train wreck, its critical that we
  compress morbidity to the latest possible point
  in the life span
• Not going to solve this within any one discipline
• Requires innovation from cortex to community
• Not going to solve this without a nimble
  interplay between basic and translational
  research
• Analogous to Nixons war on cancer in 1971

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• Beckman Institute in an ideal sandbox / incubator
  to work on this sort of problem

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Variety of projects

• Using eye-tracking to study basic mechanisms of
  reading and the effects of aging and variations
  in health literacy on learning from text and
  pictures
• Center proposal to stimulate research on the
  effects of cognitive interventions (e.g.,
  learning a second language or using the internet)
  on behavioral and brain-based measures of
  cognitive function.
• Examining the effects of physics expertise in
  understanding texts about everyday phenomena
• Using Harry Potter novels to model knowledge
  networks

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Collaborators

• Art Kramer
• Dan Morrow
• Denise Park
• Brent Roberts
• Susan Garnsey
• Travis Bauer
• Kara Federmeier
• Jose Mestre
• David Brookes
• Kiel Christianson
• Neal Cohen
• Monica Fabiani
• Gabriele Gratton
• Chilin Shih
• Fatima Husain
• Chris Grindrod
• Wai-Tat Fu
• Chuck Hillman
• Wojtek Chadzko-Zajko

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• Two examples of projects
• Each examining effects of cognitive interventions
  with aging
• One focused on specific cognitive processes
  underlying reading to improve memory
• One focused on engaged lifestyle to improve fluid
  ability.

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(1) Reading

• Multiple processes one key to effective text
  memory is connecting individual ideas together to
  create a coherent mental representation of the
  text.
• conceptual integration (Graesser, Haberlandt)
• co-activation of concepts (van den Broek)
• Behavioral signature (RT)
• Brain signature (ERPs)
• Older readers sometimes dont show this peaking
  and show relatively poorer memory.

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• Question Can we train this co-activation skill
  so as to impact memory?
• Y, M, O adults (n56 per condition) matched in
  educational level randomly assigned to CI
  Training or expectancy control

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Conceptual Integration Training

• We can think about sentences as expressing a set
  of related ideas or facts. These ideas describe
  relationships among concepts. For example, The
  skin of the elephantfish feels to the touch as if
  woven of raw silk and aluminum foil, tells you
  that an elephantfish has skin and that the
  skin has a certain feel to it and that the
  texture feels like it is woven of silk and foil
  and so on. We have found that readers who take
  the time as they read to think about these ideas
  and to actively relate each new concept to ideas
  that have come before show better memory for the
  whole sentence. These readers even pause
  momentarily (a fraction of a second!) in the
  middle of sentences to make sure they grasp these
  relationships. So for example, in the sentence
  above, a person with good memory may take time to
  find these connections at the underlined words
  The skin of the elephantfish feels to the touch
  as if woven of raw silk and aluminum foil. It is
  particularly important to do this at the end of
  each sentence before going on to the next
  sentence. The goal is not to try to remember the
  exact wording of the sentence, but to think about
  how the concepts are related.

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• r(DResource Allocation, DRecall)

• Immediate Recall

• Delayed Recall

(Stine-Morrow, Noh, Shake, in press, QJEP)
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• Simple intervention that impacts the way we
  allocate attention during reading and
  subsequent memory for text
• Currently extending this paradigm to understand
  individual differences in health literacy.

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(2) Engaged Lifestyle

• Hertzog, Kramer et al. (2008)
• Quest for enrichment effects evidence that
  individuals behaviors and contexts can enhance
  cognitive functioning and development in
  adulthood and old age
• Effects of physical exercise are clear (Kramer,
  McAuley), but effects of mental stimulation less
  so.

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• Training particular skills has
• very specific effects
• very transient effects
• demonstrated in experimental designs
• For example,

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Juggling!

• Bilateral expansion of gray matter in
  mid-temporal lobe and left posterior interior
  parietal sulcus (Draganski et al., Nature, 2004
  Boyke et al., J Neurosci, 2008)

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• Engagement
• in different sorts of activities (active
  lifestyle)
• has very broad effects longevity, delayed
  behavioral symptoms of brain pathology, cognitive
  performance (Bosma, Verghese, Wilson, Johansson,
  Konlaan)
• Correlational
• Burning questions
• causal relationship?
• if so, mechanism?

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Modeled on..
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Senior Odyssey Project

• Serves two functions
• Existence proof (causal direction)
• Translational research (multimodal model)
• Multifaceted definition of engagement
• Substantive complexity choice in tackling
  ill-defined problems (Schooler Mulatu, 2001)
• OOTM Long-Term Problems
• Scaffolds onto speeded exercise of fluid
  abilities
• OOTM Spontaneous Problems
• Creativity (self-sustaining)
• Competition (reward structure for performance)
• TOURNAMENT
• Relentless (booster effects) over 4-5 months

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Senior Odyssey Project

• Embedded in the community
• Promote age-integration (Riley Riley, 2000)
• Developed in conjunction with state and national
  OOTM
• Enhanced potential for scaling up (Kirlik et al.,
  2006)

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(Stine-Morrow, Parisi, Morrow, Park, Psych and
Aging, 2008)
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• A plug for Healthy Bodies, Brains, Minds and
  Communities.

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