Normal Ageing Studies

Question 1

Persson et al. 2006

Answer 1

Hippocampal atrophy in line with memory loss

Question 2

Hedden and Gabrierli 2004

Answer 2

Not all areas shrink at the same rate - hippocampus may lose volume, but not function

Question 3

van Dyck et al. 2002

Answer 3

Lose 8% of dopinamergic system per year

Question 4

Guttman et al. 1998

Answer 4

Along with frontal grey matter atrophy, some white matter loss, reducing connection between PFC and other regions

Question 5

Piefke 2005

Answer 5

Autobiographical memory retained with age - shift from semantic detail to emotion

Question 6

Happe et al. 1998

Answer 6

Theory of mind improves or gets better

Question 7

Park et al. 2002

Answer 7

Verbal IQ improves, more tip of the tongue etc. general decline in other functions

Question 8

Tentori et al. 2001

Answer 8

Wisdom (social decision making) gets better with age

Question 9

Perfect 1994

Answer 9

Brinley plots allow you to cross-sectionally plot performance across young and older adults to compare: fails to recognise if there’s more than one underlying function and parameter values may not represent true performance

Question 10

Wilson et al. 2003

Answer 10

Working from death backwards- death and the causes of death distorts group level performance

Question 11

Sliwinski and Buschke 1999

Answer 11

Cross-sectional say processing speed can explain up to 100% of variance - longitudinal say up to 29%

Question 12

Weale 1988

Answer 12

Light that hits a 60 year old retina is 1/3 of what hits a 10 year old retina