The impact of working memory testing on long-term associative memory.

The long-term fate of to-be-remembered information depends in part on the conditions of initial learning, including mental operations engaged via working memory. However, the mechanistic role of working memory (WM) processes in subsequent episodic memory (EM) remains unclear. Does re-exposure to word-pairs during WM recognition testing improve EM for those associations? Are benefits from WM re-exposure greater after an opportunity for retrieval practice compared to mere re-exposure to the memoranda? These questions are addressed in three experiments (N = 460) designed to assess whether WM-based recognition testing benefits long-term associative memory relative to WM-based restudying.

Cognitive aging and the life course: A new look at the Scaffolding theory.

Our understanding of human neurocognitive aging, its developmental roots, and life course influences has been transformed by brain imaging technologies, increasing availability of longitudinal data sets, and analytic advances. The Scaffolding Theory of Aging and Cognition is a life course model, proposed originally in 2009, featuring adaptivity and compensatory potential as lifelong mechanisms for meeting neurocognitive challenges posed by the environment and by developing or declining brain circuitry. Here, we review the scaffolding theory in relation to new evidence addressing when during the life course potentially enriching and depleting factors exert their effects on brain health and scaffolding, and we consider the implications for separable, and potentially reciprocal, influences on the level of cognitive function and the rate of decline in later life.

Impacts of spaceflight experience on human brain structure.

Spaceflight induces widespread changes in human brain morphology. It is unclear if these brain changes differ with varying mission duration or spaceflight experience history (i.e.

Biden or Trump? Working memory for emotion predicts the ability to forecast future feelings.

Affective forecasting-the ability to predict how different outcomes will make us feel-is a crucial aspect of making optimal decisions. Recent laboratory evidence suggests that working memory for emotion is a basic psychological mechanism underlying forecasting ability: Individual differences in affective working memory predict how accurately people can forecast their future feelings whereas measures of "cognitive" working memory do not. Here, we demonstrate that this selective relationship between affective forecasting and affective working memory generalizes to forecasted feelings about a major real-world event.

Uneven terrain versus dual-task walking: differential challenges imposed on walking behavior in older adults are predicted by cognitive and sensorimotor function.

Aging is associated with declines in walking function. To understand these mobility declines, many studies have obtained measurements while participants walk on flat surfaces in laboratory settings during concurrent cognitive task performance (dual-tasking). This may not adequately capture the real-world challenges of walking at home and around the community.

Dynamics of working memory process revealed by independent component analysis in an fMRI study.

Human memory is prone to errors in many everyday activities but also when cultivating hobbies such as traveling and/or learning a new language. For instance, while visiting foreign countries, people erroneously recall foreign language words that are meaningless to them. Our research simulated such errors in a modified Deese-Roediger-McDermott paradigm for short-term memory with phonologically related stimuli aimed at uncovering behavioral and neuronal indices of false memory formation with regard to time-of-day, a variable known to influence memory.

Why do valence asymmetries emerge in value learning? A reinforcement learning account.

The Value Learning Task (VLT; e.g., Raymond & O'Brien, 2009) is widely used to investigate how acquired value impacts how we perceive and process stimuli.

Changes in working memory brain activity and task-based connectivity after long-duration spaceflight.

We studied the longitudinal effects of approximately 6 months of spaceflight on brain activity and task-based connectivity during a spatial working memory (SWM) task. We further investigated whether any brain changes correlated with changes in SWM performance from pre- to post-flight. Brain activity was measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging while astronauts (n = 15) performed a SWM task.

The Effects of Long Duration Spaceflight on Sensorimotor Control and Cognition.

Astronauts returning from spaceflight typically show transient declines in mobility and balance. Other sensorimotor behaviors and cognitive function have not been investigated as much. Here, we tested whether spaceflight affects performance on various sensorimotor and cognitive tasks during and after missions to the International Space Station (ISS).

Brain activity during walking in older adults: Implications for compensatory versus dysfunctional accounts.

A prominent trend in the functional brain imaging literature is that older adults exhibit increased brain activity compared to young adults to perform a given task. This phenomenon has been extensively studied for cognitive tasks, with the field converging on interpretations described in two alternative accounts. One account interprets over-activation in older adults as reflecting neural dysfunction (increased brain activity - indicates poorer performance), whereas another interprets it as neural compensation (increased brain activity - supports better performance).

Age differences in functional network reconfiguration with working memory training.

Demanding cognitive functions like working memory (WM) depend on functional brain networks being able to communicate efficiently while also maintaining some degree of modularity. Evidence suggests that aging can disrupt this balance between integration and modularity. In this study, we examined how cognitive training affects the integration and modularity of functional networks in older and younger adults.

Failing to forget? Evidence for both impaired and preserved working memory control in older adults.

Voluntary forgetting is accomplished via top-down control over memory contents. Age-related declines in cognitive control may compromise voluntary forgetting. Using a working-memory variant of a directed forgetting task, we examined age differences in forgetting efficacy by analyzing direct measures of memory accuracy and two indirect measures of retention: proactive interference and semantic distortions.

Affective forecasting: A selective relationship with working memory for emotion.

Affective forecasting (AF), the ability to predict one's future feelings, is important for decision making. We posit that AF entails the ability to maintain and evaluate an emotional feeling state, and thus requires affective working memory (AWM; Mikels & Reuter-Lorenz, 2019). To test this hypothesis, a series of studies investigated whether individual differences in AWM are related to AF ability.

Asymmetrical learning and memory for acquired gain versus loss associations.

Neutral stimuli can acquire value when people learn to associate them with positive or negative outcomes (i.e., gain versus loss associations).

Variability in the analysis of a single neuroimaging dataset by many teams.

Data analysis workflows in many scientific domains have become increasingly complex and flexible. Here we assess the effect of this flexibility on the results of functional magnetic resonance imaging by asking 70 independent teams to analyse the same dataset, testing the same 9 ex-ante hypotheses. The flexibility of analytical approaches is exemplified by the fact that no two teams chose identical workflows to analyse the data.

Neural correlates of working memory training: Evidence for plasticity in older adults.

Brain activity typically increases with increasing working memory (WM) load, regardless of age, before reaching an apparent ceiling. However, older adults exhibit greater brain activity and reach ceiling at lower loads than younger adults, possibly reflecting compensation at lower loads and dysfunction at higher loads. We hypothesized that WM training would bolster neural efficiency, such that the activation peak would shift towards higher memory loads after training.

Corrigendum: Multimodal Imaging of Brain Activity to Investigate Walking and Mobility Decline in Older Adults (Mind in Motion Study): Hypothesis, Theory, and Methods.

[This corrects the article on p. 358 in vol. 11, PMID: 31969814.

Neural Dedifferentiation across the Lifespan in the Motor and Somatosensory Systems.

Age-related declines in sensorimotor performance have been linked to dedifferentiation of neural representations (i.e., more widespread activity during task performance in older versus younger adults).

Multimodal Imaging of Brain Activity to Investigate Walking and Mobility Decline in Older Adults (Mind in Motion Study): Hypothesis, Theory, and Methods.

Age-related brain changes likely contribute to mobility impairments, but the specific mechanisms are poorly understood. Current brain measurement approaches (e.g.

Publisher Correction: Maintenance, reserve and compensation: the cognitive neuroscience of healthy ageing.

In 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.

Age-Related Reductions in Tactile and Motor Inhibitory Function Start Early but Are Independent.

Aging is associated with declines in motor and somatosensory function. Some of these motor declines have been linked to age-related reductions in inhibitory function. Here we examined whether tactile surround inhibition also changes with age and whether these changes are associated with those in the motor domain.

Investigating the Effects of Spacing on Working Memory Training Outcome: A Randomized, Controlled, Multisite Trial in Older Adults.

Objective: The majority of the population will experience some cognitive decline with age. Therefore, the development of effective interventions to mitigate age-related decline is critical for older adults' cognitive functioning and their quality of life.

Methods: In our randomized controlled multisite trial, we target participants' working memory (WM) skills, and in addition, we focus on the intervention's optimal scheduling in order to test whether and how the distribution of training sessions might affect task learning, and ultimately, transfer.

Affective Working Memory: An Integrative Psychological Construct.

When people ruminate about an unfortunate encounter with a loved one, savor a long-sought accomplishment, or hold in mind feelings from a marvelous or regretfully tragic moment, what mental processes orchestrate these psychological phenomena? Such experiences typify how affect interacts with working memory, which we posit can occur in three primary ways: emotional experiences can modulate working memory, working memory can modulate emotional experiences, and feelings can be the mental representations maintained by working memory. We propose that this last mode constitutes distinct neuropsychological processes that support the integration of particular cognitive and affective processes: . Accumulating behavioral and neural evidence suggests that affective working memory processes maintain feelings and are partially separable from their cognitive working memory counterparts.

Brain connectivity tracks effects of chemotherapy separately from behavioral measures.

Several studies in cancer research have suggested that cognitive dysfunction following chemotherapy, referred to in lay terms as "chemobrain", is a serious problem. At present, the changes in integrative brain function that underlie such dysfunction remain poorly understood. Recent developments in neuroimaging suggest that patterns of functional connectivity can provide a broadly applicable neuromarker of cognitive performance and other psychometric measures.