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PSY3128 - The Psychology of Aging > The Aging Brain > Flashcards

The Aging Brain Flashcards

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1
Q

Frontal Lobe

A
  • Executive functioning
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2
Q

Motor Cortex

A
  • movement
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3
Q

Somatosensory cortex

A
  • Sensory information
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4
Q

Parietal lobe

A
  • Goal orientated movement
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5
Q

Temporal lobe

A
  • Hearing, language, and music
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6
Q

Occipital libe

A
  • Visual processing
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7
Q

Viewpoints of the brain

A
  • Anterior: front of the brain
  • Posterior: back of the brain
  • Lateral: sides of the brain
  • Medial: middle of the brain
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8
Q

White matter

A
  • Made up of nerve fibres
  • Forms tracts that send information through the brain
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9
Q

Gray matter

A
  • Made up of cell bodies
  • Where processing of information occurs
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10
Q

Ventricles

A
  • Filled with cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)
  • Cushions the brain and spinal cord
  • People with dementia have more CSF and less white and grey matter which is a sign of atrophy
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11
Q

How much of the brain is white matter and how much is gray matter

A
  • 40% is is gray
  • 60% is white
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12
Q

names of the two halves of the brain

A
  • Left cerebral hemisphere
  • Right cerebral hemisphere
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13
Q

What are the four lobes of the brain called

A
  • Frontal
  • Parietal
  • Occipital
  • Temporal
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14
Q

What is a sulcus and which sulcus separates the frontal and parietal lobe

A
  • A sulcus is a shallow groove in the cerebral cortex
  • The central sulcus separate the frontal and parietal lobe
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15
Q

Why is white matter white

A
  • Because of the myelin, an insulating layer around nerves, and axons
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16
Q

Why is gray matter grey

A
  • Because of the cell bodies, dendrites, and/or axons
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17
Q

How does the brain change with age

A
  • Decreased white and gray matter volume
  • Alteration in functional connectivity
  • Increases in vascular lesions
  • Changes in protein composition
  • Reductions in neural activity and blood flow
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18
Q

Functional brain changes

A
  • Changes in functional connectivity
  • Reductions of tract within lobes
  • Reduction between lobes
  • Reduction between hemispheres
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19
Q

How does white matter change with age

A
  • Associated with myelin degeneration, axonal loss, and reduced WM integrity
  • Most changes are often observed in areas with complex functions
  • WM reductions are quite variable within and between people
  • WM loss is linked to widespread cognitive loss
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20
Q

Gray matter changes in aging

A
  • GM volume reduction is attributed to reduce synaptic dendrites
  • Reductions don’t occur at the same rate in all areas
  • GM reductions don’t occur in everyone or at the same rate in everyone
  • GM loss is associated with cognitive deficits, but the deficits are specific to the area
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21
Q

What happens to brain volume throughout the lifespan

A
  • Ventricle volume steadily increases after 40
  • This coincides with maximum loss of gray and white matter starting around 40
  • Total cerebrum volume peaked just before the onset of puberty
  • GM and WM growth peaks in infancy and early childhood
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22
Q

Brain lesions

A
  • Appearance of vascular lesions due to risk factors such as smoking, high blood pressure, and drinking
  • If the lesions are the result of vascular risk factors they often appear in the frontal lobe
  • If the lesions are associated with early dementia, they are often more widespread
  • These changes are also associated with future cognitive decline
23
Q

Types of brain lesions

A
  • Brain lesionss are areas of the brain that show damage from injury or disease
  • White matter lesions
  • Large cortical infarction
  • Microbleed
  • Multiple lacunar infracts
24
Q

Changes in protein composition

A
  • Many changes in proteins and enzymes influence brain health and function
  • Common increases in amyloid beta and tay proteins occur with age
  • May have specific directionality of accumulation in the brain
  • Starting at the temporal lobe and then spreading out
  • Can lead to dementia and other severe deficits
25
Q

Neural activity changes

A
  • Reductions in how the neurons fire results in changes in brain activation patterns during cognitive tasks and at rest
  • Changes observed can be decreases or increases in activity while some areas see no change
  • Neural changes are influenced by individual variability
  • Associated with cognitive deficits
26
Q

Blood flow in the brain

A
  • Alterations and reductions in cerebral blood flow are observed during cognitive tasks and at rest
  • Like neural activity, there can be increases (compensation) or decreases in blood flow
  • Changes in blood flow are largely influenced by arterial stiffness and vascular risk factors
  • Reductions in blood flow are typically associated with poorer cognitive performance
  • Older adults showed decrease activity in the hippocampus compared to younger adults
  • Older adults showed increases in left prefrontal cortex activity compared to younger
27
Q

Commonalities across all brain changes

A
  • Influenced by individual variability
  • Associations with cognition are dependent on the area affected
  • Compensation method can result in increased blood flow and neural activity despite changes in GM
28
Q

Compensation

A
  • Process which the brain recruits additional brain regions or strengthens existing neural networks to compensate for age related cognitive decline
29
Q

Crystallized abilities

A
  • Cumulative abilities built up overtime
  • Ex: General knowledge, vocabulary
  • Remains stable with age
30
Q

Fluid Abilities

A
  • Require flexibility of cognitive processing at the time of test
  • Ex: Processing speed, attention, task switching
  • Declines with age
31
Q

Processing speed with age

A
  • Declines steeply
  • You can still process, just slower than before
32
Q

Sustained attention and aging

A
  • Sustaining attention throughout long periods of time
  • Preserved in aging
33
Q

Selective attention and aging

A
  • Focusing on a particular unique stimulus for a certain period of time
  • Declines in aging
34
Q

Divided attention and aging

A
  • Paying attention to a lot of things at once, like when you’re driving
  • Declines with age
35
Q

Long term episodic memory

A
  • Memory with the conscious recollection of information from a specific event or point of time
  • Ex: your first kiss
  • Stable until about 55-60
  • Declines around age 65
36
Q

Long term semantic memory

A
  • Meaning of words and concepts not specific events or times
  • Increases from 35-55 followed by a plateau
  • Slight decline after 65
37
Q

Working memory

A
  • Holding information in mind and manipulating it declines with age
  • Declines with age
38
Q

Short term memory

A
  • Holding information in mind for short times
  • Relatively preserved in normal aging
39
Q

Language and aging

A
  • Vocabulary is stable or improves
  • Visual confronting naming is stable and declines at 70
  • Verbal fluency also declines with age
40
Q

Physical activity and aging

A
  • Exercise aids executive functioning
  • Reduces declines in tissue density in frontal, parietal, and temporal cortex
  • Might have global effects on the brain
41
Q

Intellectual Stimulation

A
  • Protects against age related declines and progression of AD
  • Mental activity also increases our baseline cognitive function
  • Rats show neurogenisis in enriched environments indicating possible benefits for cognition
42
Q

Minimizing chronic stress

A
  • Associated with higher risk of AD and faster rate of cognitive decline
  • Damages hippocampal neurons
  • Reduces glucose metabolism in the hippocampus of older adults
43
Q

Brain healthy diet

A
  • Unsaturated fatty acids
  • Polyphenols
  • Antioxidant
  • These can slow cognitive decline and prevent AD progression
44
Q

Dementia prevention

A
  • 45% of risk factors are modifiable
  • Early life: Education
  • Mid life: Hearing loss, high LDL cholesterol, Depression, TBI, physical inactivity, diabetes, smoking, hypertension, obesity, excessive alcohol
  • Late life: Social isolation, air pollution, vision loss
45
Q

Cognitive reserve

A
  • Individual differences in how people process tasks which allows some to deal with pathology better than others
  • The brain tries to cope with pathology by using this pre-existing cognitive processing
  • Explains how people with similar brains may or may not get dementia
  • Measured through things like education level
46
Q

Factors to improve cognitive reserve

A
  • Mental stimulation
  • Active lifestyles
  • Social time
  • Cognitive remediation
  • Physical activity
47
Q

Negative factors for cognitive reserve

A
  • Poor education
  • Mood disturbances
  • Poor nutrition
  • Alcohol/drug abuse
  • Poor health
48
Q

Brain reserve

A
  • Often measured in terms of neurobiological capital, like number of neurons
  • Is fixed where cognitive reserve is malleable
  • Deficits only occur after a threshold has been hit
49
Q

Scaffolding theory of aging and cognition

A
  • Captures how life style and brain factors interact
  • Compensatory scaffolding is when the brain changes to compensate for these changes using various methods like neurogenesis and biological recruitment
50
Q

What factors influence compensatory scaffolding

A
  • Cognitive reserve factors such as education
  • Brain reserve factors such as head trauma
51
Q

Posterior to anterior shift in aging (PASA)

A
  • Memory declines are associated with atrophy in parietal regions
  • Additional frontal regions are often recruited to help maintain high function
  • This additional recruitment in considered a method of compensatory scaffolding
52
Q

STAC-R and bilateral recruitment

A
  • Left frontal activity is increased in high-performing older adults vs younger adults
  • Low performing older adults do not show this additional recruitment
53
Q

What cognitive domains are affected by exercise and which brain regions

A
  • Memory, attention, and decision making
  • Frontal cortex, temporal lobe, hippocampus

PSY3128 - The Psychology of Aging (8 decks)

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