Semantic memory representations are generally well maintained in aging, whereas semantic control is thought to be more affected. To explain this phenomenon, this study tested the predictions of the Compensation-Related Utilization of Neural Circuits Hypothesis (CRUNCH), focusing on task demands in aging as a possible framework. The CRUNCH effect would manifest itself in semantic tasks through a compensatory increase in neural activation in semantic control network regions but only up to a certain threshold of task demands.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study tested the hypothesis that within older Barbadian adults, sex, education, and occupation type lessen age-related cognitive decline. The analyses used a cross-sectional data set from 1325 people collected in the 2006 SABE Study (Health, Well-being, and Aging). Cognition was assessed as scores in each subdomain of the Mini-Mental State Exam.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWorking memory (WM) describes the dynamic process of maintenance and manipulation of information over a certain time delay. Neuronally, WM recruits a distributed network of cortical regions like the visual and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex as well as the subcortical hippocampus. How the input dynamics and subsequent neural dynamics impact WM remains unclear though.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Post-stroke dysphagia and communication impairments occur in two-thirds of acute stroke survivors. Identifying the shared neuroanatomical substrate for related impairments could facilitate the development of cross-system therapies. Our purpose was to elucidate discrete brain regions predictive of the combined presence of dysphagia alongside dysarthria and/or aphasia post-stroke.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMult Scler J Exp Transl Clin
November 2022
Background: Psychological resilience may play an important role in protecting multiple sclerosis care-partners from the negative effects of their support role. However, predictors of resilience in this population have yet to be identified.
Objectives: To identify characteristics predictive of psychological resilience in multiple sclerosis care-partners as informed by the Ecological Model of Resilience.
The vast majority of fMRI studies of task-related brain activity utilize common levels of task demands and analyses that rely on the central tendencies of the data. This approach does not take into account perceived difficulty nor regional variations in brain activity between people. The results are findings of brain-behavior relationships that weaken as sample sizes increase.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this study, Artificial Intelligence was used to analyze a dataset containing the cortical thickness from 1,100 healthy individuals. This dataset had the cortical thickness from 31 regions in the left hemisphere of the brain as well as from 31 regions in the right hemisphere. Then, 62 artificial neural networks were trained and validated to estimate the number of neurons in the hidden layer.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTask-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) neuroimaging for the study of cognitive neuroscience provides insight into how the brain responds to increasing cognitive demands. Theoretical models of neural-cognitive relationships define neural efficiency and neural capacity as two parameters to describe the rate of gain of brain activity and the upper limits of the increases, respectively. Although qualitatively well described, there are limited discussions and demonstrations of estimating these parameters from data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSemantic memory representations are overall well-maintained in aging whereas semantic control is thought to be more affected. To explain this phenomenon, this study aims to test the predictions of the Compensation Related Utilization of Neural Circuits Hypothesis (CRUNCH) focusing on task demands in aging as a possible framework. The CRUNCH effect would manifest itself in semantic tasks through a compensatory increase in neural activation in semantic control network regions but only up to a certain threshold of task demands.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study investigated whether relationships between age and measures of gray matter in the brain differed across the lifespan and by years of education. The hypothesis is that year to year differences in brain measures vary across the lifespan and are affected by the years of education someone has. Cortical thickness and subcortical volume were measured from 391 healthy adults (age range: 19-80 years).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOlfactory dysfunction consistently occurs in patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), beyond the mild and gradual decline in olfactory ability found in normal aging. This dysfunction begins early in the disease course, typically before clinical diagnosis, and progresses with disease severity. While odor identification and detection deficits clearly differentiate AD from controls, there remains uncertainty as to whether these are determined by olfactory threshold.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAdvancing age affects the recruitment of task related neural resources thereby changing the efficiency, capacity and use of compensatory processes. With advancing age, brain activity may therefore increase within a region or be reorganized to utilize different brain regions. The different brain regions may be exclusive to old adults or accessible to young and old alike, but non-optimal.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Olfactory dysfunction (OD) is a frequent symptom of Parkinson's disease (PD) that appears years prior to diagnosis. Previous studies suggest that PD-related OD is different from non-parkinsonian forms of olfactory dysfunction (NPOD) as PD patients maintain trigeminal sensitivity as opposed to patients with NPOD who typically exhibit reduced trigeminal sensitivity. We hypothesize the presence of a specific alteration of functional connectivity between trigeminal and olfactory processing areas in PD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStudies of working memory have used immediate and delayed recall of lists of items. Serial position effects are the phenomena where items at the beginning and end of a studied list are recalled differentially from items in the middle of the list. In matching versions of the task, study items may be presented serially or simultaneously in a grid.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF: We examined the extent to which loss of consciousness (LOC) following mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) may be associated with impairments in executive functions and declarative memory more than a year after brain injury.: Analyses were run on 548 participants who had self-reported LOC of <1 min, 441 with LOC of 1-20 min, and 13,609 no brain injury comparison participants, taken from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA), a nationwide study on health and aging.: Those that had mTBI with LOC of 1-20 min were more likely than no head injury comparisons to be impaired on measures of executive functioning and declarative memory.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn Figure 3b of the originally published article, the colours of the bars were incorrectly reversed. The bars shown in green should have been shown in blue to represent the findings from older adults, whereas the bars shown in blue should have been shown in green to represent the findings from young adults. This has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMost of the current knowledge about age-related differences in brain neurofunctional organization stems from neuroimaging studies using either a "resting state" paradigm, or cognitive tasks for which performance decreases with age. However, it remains to be known if comparable age-related differences are found when participants engage in cognitive activities for which performance is maintained with age, such as vocabulary knowledge tasks. A functional connectivity analysis was performed on 286 adults ranging from 18 to 80 years old, based either on a resting state paradigm or when engaged in vocabulary tasks.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIdiopathic hypersomnia (IH) is characterized by excessive daytime sleepiness but, in contrast to narcolepsy, does not involve cataplexy, sleep-onset REM periods, or any consistent hypocretin-1 deficiency. The pathophysiological mechanisms of IH remain unclear. Because of the involvement of the default-mode network (DMN) in alertness and sleep, our aim was to investigate the structural and functional modifications of the DMN in IH.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTraining and repeated exposure to odorants leads to enhanced olfactory sensitivity. So far, the efficacy of intensive olfactory training on olfactory function in a healthy population and its underlying neurobiological basis remain poorly known. This study investigated the effects of a 6-week intensive and well-controlled olfactory training on olfactory function and brain structure/neuroplasticity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the originally published version of article, there were two errors in the references. The reference "Nilsson, J. & Lövdén, M.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCognitive ageing research examines the cognitive abilities that are preserved and/or those that decline with advanced age. There is great individual variability in cognitive ageing trajectories. Some older adults show little decline in cognitive ability compared with young adults and are thus termed 'optimally ageing'.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe concept of cognitive reserve (CR) can explain individual differences in susceptibility to cognitive or functional impairment in the presence of age or disease-related brain changes. Epidemiologic evidence indicates that CR helps maintain performance in the face of pathology across multiple cognitive domains. We therefore tried to identify a single, "task-invariant" CR network that is active during the performance of many disparate tasks.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTwo independent lines of research provide evidence that speaking more than one language may 1) contribute to increased grey matter in healthy younger and older adults and 2) delay cognitive symptoms in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or Alzheimer disease (AD). We examined cortical thickness and tissue density in monolingual and multilingual MCI and AD patients matched (within Diagnosis Groups) on demographic and cognitive variables. In medial temporal disease-related (DR) areas, we found higher tissue density in multilingual MCIs versus monolingual MCIs, but similar or lower tissue density in multilingual AD versus monolingual AD, a pattern consistent with cognitive reserve in AD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: We aimed to examine the extent to which loss of consciousness (LOC) following mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) may be associated with impairments in time- and event-based prospective memory (PM). PM is thought to involve executive processes and be subserved by prefrontal regions. Neuroimaging research suggests alterations to these areas of the brain several years after mTBI, particularly if LOC was experienced.
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