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Psychology Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

2015

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Marquette University

APOE ε4

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Full-Text Articles in Psychology

Genetic Risk For Alzheimer's Disease Alters The Five-Year Trajectory Of Semantic Memory Activation In Cognitively Intact Elders, Stephen M. Rao, Aaron Bonner-Jackson, Kristy A. Nielson, Michael Seidenberg, J. Carson Smith, John L. Woodard, Sally Durgerian May 2015

Genetic Risk For Alzheimer's Disease Alters The Five-Year Trajectory Of Semantic Memory Activation In Cognitively Intact Elders, Stephen M. Rao, Aaron Bonner-Jackson, Kristy A. Nielson, Michael Seidenberg, J. Carson Smith, John L. Woodard, Sally Durgerian

Psychology Faculty Research and Publications

Healthy aging is associated with cognitive declines typically accompanied by increased task-related brain activity in comparison to younger counterparts. The Scaffolding Theory of Aging and Cognition (STAC) (Park and Reuter-Lorenz, 2009; Reuter-Lorenz and Park, 2014) posits that compensatory brain processes are responsible for maintaining normal cognitive performance in older adults, despite accumulation of aging-related neural damage. Cross-sectional studies indicate that cognitively intact elders at genetic risk for Alzheimer's disease (AD) demonstrate patterns of increased brain activity compared to low risk elders, suggesting that compensation represents an early response to AD-associated pathology. Whether this compensatory response persists or declines with the …