Lecture 3: Aging

Question 1

Societal aspects:

• Dual aging

Answer 1

More older adults, increasing longevity

Question 2

Societal aspects:

• Changing pattern of birth wave and 2 causes

Answer 2

• Birth wave has changed from normal distribution/pyramid to after the ‘baby boom’ to see there are fewer children and more older people
  1. Increased life expectancy (1850 ~ 40 years, 2000 ~ 80 years)
  2. Increased health span

Question 3

What is the biggest issue in dual aging?

Answer 3

1. Preserving autonomy is the biggest issue in dual aging
   - From perspective of expense limiting → older people need to remain living autonomously as long as possible
   - Increased pressure on families and other informal caretakers
2. Financing retirement and health insurance is another big issue

Question 4

Evolutionary aspects:

• Natural selection (evolutionary pressure) selects for… 2 points and aging

Answer 4

1. Factors that promote successful adaptation
2. Factors that increase chances of passing on our genes to next generation

There is no evolutionary pressure to select for genes that promote successful aging, since it doesn’t contribute to passing on our genes

Question 5

Evolutionary aspects:

• Grandmother hypothesis

Answer 5

Suggesting the extended human female postmenopausal life span is explainable by kin selection. Grandmothers who provide care to their grandchildren are suggested to increase their fitness.

Question 6

Evolutionary aspects:

• Why do we age?

Answer 6

Wear and tear is why you age

• There is little to prevent the build-up of cellular damage and waste, or neurodegenerative diseases

Question 7

Neurobiological aspects:

• Trouble that becomes more prevalent as we age:

Answer 7

• Cardiac vascular diseases
• Broken bones, cancer, diabetes, alzheimer’s, huntington’s , parkinson’s disease
• Sensory systems → e.g. hear less well
• Motor systems → e.g. get slower as you age
• Sleep and bio-rhythms
• Hormonal changes → e.g. menopause

Question 8

Neurobiological aspects:

• Sleep and bio-rhythms influences on temp and mem and consequences

Answer 8

• Circadian rhythms influence temperature
• Normal aging is fewer hours of deep sleep (e.g. less memory consolidation)
• Normal aging involves highest peak shafts from afternoon to morning
• Increased need for naps

Consequences: reduced cognitive performance, more optimal functioning in the morning and weaker memory consolidation

Question 9

Neurobiological aspects:

• Ontogenesis
• What brain area is last to develop

Answer 9

• Development of the individual
• Prefrontal cortex is last to develop

Question 9

Neurobiological aspects:

• What does normal neural aging look like at a macro level?

Answer 9

• Brain shrinks
• Brain gets lighter (10% of brain weight is lost)
• More space between the lobules of the brain

Question 10

Neurobiological aspects:

• Fylogenesis

Answer 10

Development of the species

Question 11

Neurobiological aspects:

• Pattern of aging in the brain

Answer 11

With aging there is a last-in, first-out pattern → the prefrontal cortex is last to mature, and so the first to decline with aging (consequences of cognitive decline)

Question 12

1. Cognitive aspects: The prefrontal cortex supports regulative functions, these decline with aging

• Stability vs flexibility
• Working memory
• Planning

Answer 12

• Stability vs flexibility → switching between tasks or mental sets (manoeuvring the balance between stability and flexibility) and shielding of goals
• Working memory → updating of all potentially relevant information and remembering what to do when
• Planning, impulse control

Question 13

2. Cognitive aspects: Orienting (these lean heavily on the PFC, decline with aging and especially lost with dementia)

• Orienting and space

Answer 13

• Orienting in space, where you are and where others are
• Temporal and autobiographical space (time and continuity) → coherent image of self across time, what are you doing and why
• Contextual space → notion of the context and surroundings and whether the behaviours and thoughts are appropriate within the context

Question 14

3. Cognitive aspects: Memory (especially with aging but everyone experiences it)

• Memory relies on which brain area?
• 2 types of failures to remember

Answer 14

→ relies heavily on the hippocampus and also one of the first to decline with aging

1. Failure to remember the right words (tip of the tongue)
2. Failure to remember the contextual details of an event (e.g. source memory = forgetting the source of a piece of information)

Question 15

Cognitive aspects: 6 cognitive patterns that do not show decline

Answer 15

1. Creativity
2. Language skills and capabilities
3. Perception
4. Socio-emotional processes → can counter some cognitive declines in older adults
5. Crystallised intelligence = building up knowledge base that can be used irrelevant ways (fluid intelligence goes with age)
6. Wisdom (pragmatic wisdom = practical application of wisdom)

Question 16

Social-emotional aspects of aging: Living with limitations

Answer 16

• Hobby’s, interests
• Living independently
• Reduced mobility

Question 17

Social-emotional aspects of aging: Limitations lead to a smaller world

Answer 17

• Reduced circle of friends
• Inactivity
• Loneliness

Question 18

Social-emotional aspects of aging: Limitations influence purpose in life

Answer 18

• Retirement
• Loss of a partner
• Social relationships
• Changes in health
• Depression

Question 19

Social-emotional aspects of aging:

• Identifying with our younger vs older selves and consequences

Answer 19

• We find it easy to identify with our younger self
• We find it virtually impossible to connect to our older self

Consequences; loneliness, ageism = prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination based on age → takes people’s individual dignity away

Question 20

Ageism within institutions

• Labour market, media, health care

Answer 20

• In the labour market → prejudice against older workers and Gen Z
• In the media → older adults are either stereotypes or invisible
• In health care → how doctors communicate with seniors, belittling and talking to family members rather than the seniors themselves (assuming that they are mentally slow)

Question 21

Ageism between persons

Answer 21

Many people (incl. seniors) have negative thoughts towards seniors

Question 23

Ageism towards oneself

• self-fulfilling prophecy and stereotype

Answer 23

• Self-fulfilling prophecy = acting in accord with the misconceptions about aging in society
• Stereotype → internalisation → expectation → behaviour

Question 24

The impact of ageism

Answer 24

Ageism is socially accepted: - Humour - Innocent → no harm intended, but it is not without consequence

Question 25

3 points that ageism causes

Answer 25

1. Ageism can change the way we look at ourselves 2. Ageism can turn generations against one another 3. Ageism can impact health, quality of life, mental wellbeing (people with a positive outlook on their own aging process live in average 7.5 years longer, outlook on own health is driven by aging)

Question 26

Is it all just misery then? - Social-emotional resilience

Answer 26

Social-emotional resilience supports cognitive preservation → larger social networks have higher cognitive functions

Question 27

Is it all just misery then? - Wisdom → reasoning and social dilemmas

Answer 27

Wisdom illustrated the intertwining of cognitive expertise and socio-emotional resilience → older adults demonstrate gains in reasoning about social dilemmas despite fluid intelligence (reason, think, abstract) declines → showing preserved perspective-taking and recognition of patterns through life experience

Question 27

Is it all just misery then? - Emotional learning - Positive stimuli

Answer 27

- Older adults retain emotional learning and decision-making abilities - Older adults exhibit stronger engagement with positive stimuli, especially when the content pertains to personally relevant information

Question 28

Is it all just misery then? - Structural and functional resilience

Answer 28

Structural and functional resilience in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and amygdala supports reasoning and abstract thinking

Question 29

Interventions and prevention: Factors tapping into individual differences in cognitive status with aging… - Lifestyle, exercise and connectedness - What matters most?

Answer 29

- Lifestyle factors (nutrition and consumption patterns → calorie restriction e.g. intermittent fasting) - Physical exercise and fitness (burning calories and aerobic activities → calorie restriction and physical exercise impact almost all hallmarks of normal neural aging) - Social connectedness and purpose in life (volunteer work, religious communities) What matters most is inter-generational contact, meaning, activity and competence

Question 30

Interventions and prevention: Training complex skills - What matters most? - Training complex skills promotes...

Answer 30

- What matters is willingness to invest, coordination skills and fun - Promotes structural and functional neural network connectivity

Question 31

Interventions and prevention: Brain training - What matters most? - Effects of brain training

Answer 31

- What matters is emotionally relevant framing of information and tasks using real-world stimuli → experience compensates for cognitive declines - Effects not robust: difficult to replicate and generalise - Placebo effects occur in the brain training studies and not proper control groups - Brain training has no effect on neural networks

Question 32

Variability - Inter-individual variability - Individual differences - Mistakes in aging

Answer 32

- Inter-individual variability is key to aging → older adults differ more from each other than they do from young adults - Individual differences get amplified over the years - Assuming that all older adults are alike is mistake in aging psychology, society at large, and a major source of ageism

Question 33

Resource models - Reduced mental resources - Contextual factors - Availability of resources - Self-relevant/arousing info

Answer 33

- Age-related differences in cognitive performance are due to reduced mental resources (slower processing, weaker attention, executive function, and poorer inhibition). - Contextual factors (e.g. time of day) can affect how much cognitive resource is available - Variability in socioaffective functioning among older adults links to differences in availability of resources - Memory enhancements can occur when attention is divided → suggest that encoding of self-relevant/arousing info may be prioritised (even for older adults)

Question 34

Compensation

Answer 34

Older adults recruit additional resources in an attempt to address the cognitive challenges that occur with age - Older adults more influenced by encoding info about another person - Older adults tend to apply resources to process emotional information (particularly positive info) in a more controlled fashion

Question 35

Compensation models - HAROLD - CRUNCH

Answer 35

- Hemispheric asymmetry reduction in older adults - Compensation-related utilisation of neural circuits hypothesis Older adults often need to use more brain areas to perform tasks, even when the tasks are easier than those faced by younger adults

Question 36

Compensation models - PASA

Answer 36

- The posterior–anterior shift with aging Identifies patterns of age-related changes across specific regions, whereby increased frontal lobe activity occurs hand-in-hand with decreased occipital lobe activity (effected by socially relevant processes)

Question 37

Compensation models - STAC

Answer 37

- The Scaffolding Theory of Aging and Cognition It highlights how cognitive performance depends on both the ability to use helpful mental processes and limits in resources caused by factors like illness, injury, or individual differences such as education

Question 38

Which subregions shows the largest age-related atrophy and disruption of function?

Answer 38

The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and hippocampus (selective attention and memory binding)

Question 39

Which subregions that are least affected structurally or during active task performance by aging?

Answer 39

The ventromedial prefrontal cortex and amygdala (socioaffective function, affective decision making and learning) - These regions engage under different circumstances, or strongly connected for different stimuli

Question 40

Age-related changes in connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and medial temporal lobe causes...

Answer 40

Less negative emotional memory retrieval with age (focus more on positive stimuli)

Question 41

How socioaffective function can be intertwined with cognitive function example

Answer 41

One example of an ability that integrates the two is wisdom (despite losses in fluid intelligence, their reasoning about social dilemmas shows more awareness of perspectives and limitations of knowledge)

Question 42

How might socioaffective factors influence cognitive ability?

Answer 42

- Older adults are more likely to sustain attention on and remember emotional relative info (particularly if it is positive) - Emotional information can be remembered at the expense of nonemotional content in older as well as younger adults - Larger social networks =better cog function= less dementia

Question 43

Stereotype threat on memory and aging effect

Answer 43

Stereotype threat disrupts controlled processes during retrieval, this means older adults are more impaired at distinguishing true from false memories if they are reminded of memory decline with aging just before they retrieve info - Seek to avoid negative outcomes rather than achieve positive outcome

Question 44

How might cognitive changes with aging influence emotion or social processing?

Answer 44

- Experience of mixed emotions increases slightly with age → emotions are not entirely determined by the availability of cognitive resources - Dynamic stimuli benefits older adults in differentiating smile types in dynamic faces

Question 45

Why is adults' cognitive performance better within socioaffective domains?

Answer 45

Often, older adults’ cognitive performance is better within socioaffective domains compared with other domains, in part because of the environmental support provided by these domains

Question 46

Future directions: Social, affective, and cognitive aging: Intersections with motivated cognition

Answer 46

Motivational shifts can influence the priority of socioaffective and cognitive factors

Question 47

Future directions: Using social and affective manipulations to probe cognitive abilities

Answer 47

Socioemotional resources may affect how cognitive tasks are performed (e.g. when emotional info is held in working memory) - far from a full understanding of these types of interactions

Question 48

Future directions: The intersection of social and affective factors

Answer 48

Often intertwined: - Emotions convey socially relevant info - Social interactions often trigger emotions - Both have environmental support, but, there are some clear points of diffs in their neural underpinnings (biological mechanisms) and behavioural outcomes

Question 49

Affective context

Answer 49

Refers to the emotional and psychological environment that influences how individuals perceive info, interact with others, and form memories