PSY2004 W3 Ageing and Physiology (L)

Question 1

How does snesory/perceptual/motor ability change with age?

Answer 1

Sensorimotor and cognitive declines more strongly overlap with increasing age, but there are both common and independent factors driving declines in sensorimotor and cognitive abilities.

Question 2

How do sleep and circadian arousal change with age?

Answer 2

SWS is important for episodic memory but is particularly less efficient in older age; circadian arousal may also impact cognitive abilities

Question 3

How does physical exercise impact the psychology of ageing?

Answer 3

Physical exercise interventions generally improve cognitive abilities, brain plasticity, and mental and physical health across the lifespan

Question 4

What does Baltes model predict?

Answer 4

That cultural/environmental factors would become less important to biological factors in terms of explaining age-related changes in cognition. This is an instance of dedifferentiation.

Question 5

What are some sensory variable ?

Answer 5

vision and hearing but other factors like balance, walking, grip strength, proprioception.

Question 6

What is the common cause hypothesis?

Answer 6

Age-related delcine in cognitive and sensorimotor function is due to deterioration of common neurological processes. Idea that a doman-general mechanism is responsible for a large amount of age-related decline in cognitive and sensorimotor functions.
Sensorimotor function could fully mediate the age-related variability in cognitive abilities.
Controlling for sensorimotor functioning (vision, hearing, balance/gait) reduces the age-intelligence relation to null

Question 7

What did Lindenberger and Baltes find?

Berlin Aging Study (BASE)

Answer 7

Second-order factor of “intelligence” that comprised the other factors of reasoning, knowledge.
Sensorimotor function factor (vision, hearing & balance/gait) largely mediated the effects of age on intelligence.
Dedifferentiation fo cognitive and sensorimotor function in older age. = prediction form Baltes lifespan perspective (importance of processes can emerge later in life)

Question 8

What is Sensory deprivation?

Answer 8

Negative effects of sensorimotor ability on cognitive ability indirect via increased social disengagement.
Declining sensory acuity creates communication and mobility difficulties, increasing the likelihood of social withdrawal and disengagement from intellectually stimulating activities which could have knock-on effects on cognitive ability over an extended period (years to decades)

Question 9

Could the relationship between cognitive ability and sensorimotor function be bidirectional?

Answer 9

Yes, if cognitive resources become more limited and sensory acuity declines due to “brain aging”, this may increase the cognitive load for basic processing of sensory information.
This could increase the likelihood of social withdrawal and reduced participation in mentally stimulating activities, which limits opportunities to moderate the adverse effects of brain aging.

Question 10

What is the common cause hypothesis ?

Answer 10

Indirect effect of age on sensorimotor and cogntive ability via a common ause. Both indirect adn direc affect of age on sensorimotor and cogntiive ability.
Longitudinal studies show more modest associations between sensorimotor and cognitive declines.
Age-related declines in cognitive and sensorimotor functioning can be attributed to both a broad common cause factor and separate domain-specific mechanisms

Question 11

What is a typical human sleep profile?

Answer 11

Sleep phases and related activity in the brain. Typical human sleep profile: cyclic occurrence of REM sleep and on-REM sleep Non-REM sleep includes SWS.

Question 12

What is WASO?

Answer 12

Wake after sleep onset. proprotion of the sleep duration that each age spends in respective sleep stages.

Question 13

How is sleep affected by age?

Answer 13

Older adults sleep less and awaken more frequently during the night. Diminished slow-wave sleep (SWS) – decreases in slow-wave activity (SWA), especially over the PFC. Decreases in spindle density.
Time in REM sleep remains unchanged, but there is a decrease in phasic REM in OAs

Question 14

Is there evidence of sleep’s affect on memory?

Answer 14

Evidence that SWS is involved in long-term memory consolidation in particular. Ss learned a visuospatial 2D object-location task while being presented with an odor.

Question 15

What is SWS?

Answer 15

Slow wave sleep

Question 16

What is SWA?

Answer 16

Slow wave activity

Question 17

How is the hippocampo-neocortical dialogue affected by sleep?

Answer 17

During wakefulness: information is encoded in neocortical and hippocampal network.
During SWS: repeated activation of recently learned information n within hippocampal networks.
Reactivations stimulate the transfer of memory traces towards neocortical sites for long-term storage.

Question 18

With increased age what impacts the hippocampo-neocortical dialogue?

Answer 18

Reduce SWS Changes in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis leads to increases in evening cortisol levels with age, but memory consolidation requires low cortisol levels during sleep.
Hippocampus contains a high density of cortisol receptors, and thus the increased cortisol levels could impair the hippocampus’s function to transfer memories for long-term storage in the neocortex
OA willl experience less benefits of sleep to memory performance than YA, especially SWS

Question 19

What is weakened in healthy older adults?

Answer 19

Findings suggest that the link between episodic memory and SWS that is typically observed in younger adults may be weakened in healthy older adults.

Question 20

Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire

How is Circadian arousal and time of day (TOD) affect by age?

Answer 20

70-75% of OAs report that their peak arousal period is in the morning vs. YAs preference for afternoon/evening for their peak arousal. There is little representation for the age groups in the opposite time of day.
Younger and older adults’ inhibition found to be sensitive to their optimal time of day (TOD) – both are more effective to suppress irrelevant information during their optimal vs. non-optimal TOD.
This could be important to consider as your alertness has an effect on your cognition.

Question 21

What are the different type of physical ecercise studies?

Answer 21

Correlational cross sectional study.
Correlational longitudinal study.
Interventions Longitudinal immediate.
Intervention Longitudinal long term.

Question 22

What is Correlational cross sectional study of exercice?

Answer 22

reported physical exercise, cognition relations at a single time point

Question 23

What is Intervention longitudinal (immediate) physical exercise study?

Answer 23

immediate effects of physical exericse on cogntiion vs control

Question 24

What is Correlaional longitudinal physical exercise study?

Answer 24

baseline reported phyiscal exercice => cogntiion gains at later time points

Question 25

What is Intervention longitudinal (long-term) physical exercise study?

Answer 25

long-term effects of physical exercise on cognition vs. control

Question 26

What did the study observe?

DiPrieto et al., 1996

Answer 26

Physical activity and cognitive ability
There was a modest yet significant correlation between the physical activity and cognitive abilities scores that was independent of gender, self-rated health, average peak expiratory flow rate, BMI, number of current social relationships, and visual contacts in the past month.

Question 27

What is a problem of correlational studies?

DiPrieto et al., 1996

Answer 27

When education was added to the model, the effect of physical activity was substantially diminished.
This is the problem with correlational studies: the inherent assumption is that physical activity CAUSES improvements to cognitive ability, but it’s not clear if that is the direction of the relationship.
Correlational studies do not disambiguate the direction of the physical-cognitive relationship.

Question 28

What types of exercise control groups part take in?

Answer 28

Passive, stretching, motor coodination

Question 29

What does exercise groups part take in?

Answer 29

Cardiovascular only, resistence/strenght, ombination with strenght training and sometimes motor coordination

Question 30

Does physical exercise benefit cogntiive ability?

Answer 30

Physical exercise improves cognitive ability, overall but effects are strongest for executive tasks.

Question 31

What was found when looking at the affect physical exercise had on brain plasticity?

Answer 31

Regions showing significant increase in volume for OAs (60-79) who participated in an aerobic fitness training program, compared to nonaerobic (stretching and toning) control OAs. Intervention: 3 1-hour exercise training sessions per week for 6 months
- ACC/SMA = anterior cingulate cortex/supplementary motor cortex
- lSTL = left superior temporal gyrus
- rIFG = right inferior frontal gyrus
- AWM = anterior white matter

√ Aerobic exercise shows gains in cognitive abilities and brain regions
√ Aerobic exercise increases volume in gray (blue regions) and white (yellow regions) matter in older adults

Question 32

Areas of the brain that suffer the effects of ageing reap the best benefits

Answer 32

 Exercise training increased hippocampal volume by 2%, associated improvements in spatial memory; no changes in the thalamus

Question 33

Why is aerobic/cardiovascular exercise so beneficial?

Answer 33

Aerobic fitness, measured by VO2 max (maximal oxygen uptake), indicates blood flow and delivery of oxygen to the brain and prompts these structural and functional neuroplastic changes

Question 34

Regular physical activity enhances mental health and wellbeing:

Answer 34

 Self-esteem and self-concept
 Positive social interactions
 Ability to cope with stress
 Feelings of control and competency

Question 35

What does regular physical activity reduces the risk of?

Haskell et al, 2997; Haan & Wallace, 2004

Answer 35

 Cardiovascular disease
 Stroke
 Hypertension
 Type 2 diabetes