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The Effects Of Alexithymia And Age On Inhibitory Control, Anthony Correro
The Effects Of Alexithymia And Age On Inhibitory Control, Anthony Correro
Dissertations (1934 -)
Alexithymia is a stable personality trait typified by externally oriented thinking and difficulties identifying and describing feelings. It is associated with cognitive-affective deficits such as poorer memory for emotional and neutral information as well as executive dysfunction. Relatedly, aging is accompanied by executive dysfunction and increasing alexithymia. Because executive functions comprise multiple cognitive skills, it is essential to demarcate which are impacted by aging and alexithymia. While age-related deficits in inhibitory control are well established, there is a dearth of literature examining inhibition in alexithymia. Thus, this study aimed to examine the effect of alexithymia on inhibition and to interrogate …
Examining The Effects Of Stress And Age On Neural Reward Processing: Considerations For The Role Of Individual Differences In Autonomic Reactivity, William Mccuddy
Examining The Effects Of Stress And Age On Neural Reward Processing: Considerations For The Role Of Individual Differences In Autonomic Reactivity, William Mccuddy
Dissertations (1934 -)
Acute stress is unavoidable and may hinder basic reward processing underlying adaptive decision-making. Additionally, older adults may be at an increased risk of poor decision-making after exposure to acute stress due to age-related changes in cognitive and autonomic functioning. The current study assessed the influence of acute stress, autonomic reactivity, and age on a simple behavioral task during fMRI. Specifically, old and young adults completed a basic reward processing paradigm (i.e., where participants received monetary rewards and punishments) after exposure to acute stress (i.e., social evaluative cold pressor) or control procedure between-subjects. In the young group, differential responses for monetary …
Predicting Cognitive Decline In Older Adults Through Multi-Voxel Pattern Analysis, Nathan Hantke
Predicting Cognitive Decline In Older Adults Through Multi-Voxel Pattern Analysis, Nathan Hantke
Dissertations (1934 -)
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that is associated with cognitive and structural decline beyond what is seen in normal, healthy aging. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research indicates that prior to the onset of measureable cognitive impairment, individuals at-risk for AD demonstrate different patterns of neural activation than individuals at lower risk. Thus, differences in task-activated fMRI may be beneficial in predicting cognitive decline at a "pre-symptomatic" stage. The present study utilizes multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) of baseline fMRI task-related activation to predict cognitive decline, with the hypothesis that famous and non-famous name task activation will discriminate …