Latin American Initiative for Lifestyle Intervention to Prevent Cognitive Decline (LatAm-FINGERS): Study design and harmonization.

Introduction: Latin American Initiative for Lifestyle Intervention to Prevent Cognitive Decline (LatAm-FINGERS) is the first non-pharmacological multicenter randomized clinical trial (RCT) to prevent cognitive impairment in Latin America (LA). Our aim is to present the study design and discuss the strategies used for multicultural harmonization.

Methods: This 1-year RCT (working on a 1-year extension) investigates the feasibility of a multi-domain lifestyle intervention in LA and the efficacy of the intervention, primarily on cognitive function.

Factors that positively or negatively mediate the effects of age on working memory across the adult life span.

Working memory abilities significantly decrease with advancing age; hence, the search for factors that may increase or mitigate this decline is critical. Several factors have been identified that influence working memory; however, their effects have been mainly assessed separately and rarely together with other factors in the same sample. We examined 120 variables to search for factors that jointly act as mediators of working memory decay across the adult life span.

Mediators of episodic memory decay across the adult life span.

The ability to remember the details of our own experiences declines gradually as we get old. The reason for this decay has been attributed to several factors besides age, such as education, nutrient intake and health status. However, the influence of these factors has mainly been examined individually and rarely together.

Emotional context during encoding modulates recognition electrophysiological activity.

The aim of the study was to determine whether experiencing a non-emotional event in a positive or negative emotional context affected recognition of the event and the related electrophysiological activity. Twenty-eight adults participated in a betting-game task in which they could win (positive emotional context) or lose (negative emotional context) money. The participants also completed a non-betting task (non-emotional context).

Positive and negative emotional contexts unevenly predict episodic memory.

The aim of this study was to investigate whether the recognition of faces with neutral expressions differs when they are encoded under different emotional contexts (positive, negative or non-emotional). The effects of the emotional valence context on the subsequent memory effect (SME) and the autonomic responses were also examined. Twenty-eight participants performed a betting-game task in which the faces of their virtual opponents were presented in each trial.

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 rate of source memory decline across the adult life span.

Previous studies have suggested that the ability to remember contextual information related to specific episodic experiences declines with advancing age; however, the exact moment in the adult life span when this deficit begins is still controversial. Source memory for spatial information was tested in a life span sample of 1,500 adults between the ages of 21 and 80. Initially, images of common objects were randomly presented on one quadrant of a screen while the participants judged whether they were natural or artificial.