We accept Mahr & Csibra's (M&C's) causal claim that episodic memory provides humans with the means for evaluating the veracity of reports about non-occurrent events. We reject their evolutionary argument that this is the proper function of episodic memory. We explore three intriguing implications of the causal claim, for cognitive neuropsychology, comparative psychology, and philosophy.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X17001376 | DOI Listing |
J Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci
January 2025
Herbert and Jacqueline Krieger Klein Alzheimer's Research Center, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA.
Objectives: The oldest old adults (90+) constitute the fastest growing demographic at highest dementia risk among older adults. Depression, a common risk factor, inherently presents with heterogeneous clinical manifestations. Here, we explored the associations of the predominant depression dimensions with cognition in the LifeAfter90 study.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlzheimers Dement
January 2025
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA.
Introduction: We compared the relationship between offspring education and cognitive health outcomes among Hispanic and White adults.
Methods: We used data from Hispanic and White (1998-2018) United States (US) Health and Retirement Study (HRS) participants (n = 17,484). We assessed cognitive function and decline using episodic memory scores in linear mixed models and incident cognitive impairment with no dementia (CIND) or probable dementia using the Langa-Weir 27-point-scale in Cox proportional hazards models.
A previous study employing fMRI measures of retrieval-related cortical reinstatement reported that young, but not older, adults employ 'retrieval gating' to attenuate aspects of an episodic memory that are irrelevant to the retrieval goal. We examined whether the weak memories of the older adults in that study rendered goal-irrelevant memories insufficiently intrusive to motivate retrieval gating. Young and older participants studied words superimposed on rural or urban scenes, or on pixelated backgrounds.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by progressive impairments in episodic and spatial memory, as well as circuit and network-level dysfunction. While functional impairments in medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) and hippocampus (HPC) have been observed in patients and rodent models of AD, it remains unclear how communication between these regions breaks down in disease, and what specific physiological changes are associated with the onset of memory impairment. We used silicon probes to simultaneously record neural activity in MEC and hippocampus before or after the onset of spatial memory impairment in the 3xTg mouse model of AD pathology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGerontologist
January 2025
Department of Sociology and Criminology, University at Buffalo, SUNY, Buffalo, NY, USA.
Background And Objectives: Social engagement is positively associated with cognitive health, yet the role of these activities across the life span and in different contexts remains under-explored. This study investigates the association between social activities and two domains of cognitive functioning among middle-aged and older Chinese individuals, a population with the highest number of dementia cases in the world. We pay particular attention to the unique role of activities in midlife on cognitive decline in the later years.
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