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Examining Age-Related Enhancement Of Multisensory Gain: The Role Of Sensory Decline And Inverse Effectiveness, Laura C. Schneeberger
Examining Age-Related Enhancement Of Multisensory Gain: The Role Of Sensory Decline And Inverse Effectiveness, Laura C. Schneeberger
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
Older adults experience a greater benefit from multisensory integration than their younger counterparts, but it is unclear why. One hypothesis is that age-related sensory decline weakens unisensory stimulus effectiveness, producing a boost in multisensory gain through inverse effectiveness. Many previous studies present stimuli at the same intensity for both younger and older adults (i.e., stimulus-matched), as opposed to accounting for each participant’s unique perceptual ability (i.e., perception-matched). This makes it difficult to discern the source of age-related differences in multisensory gain. Through a combination of stimulus-matched and perception-matched tasks, I found that older adults exhibit enhanced multisensory gain at low …
Investigating The Roles Of The Dorsal And Ventral Striatum In Humor Comprehension And Appreciation Throughout Health, Aging, And Parkinson’S Disease, Maggie Prenger
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
Humor processing is thought to involve two distinct components. The first, humor comprehension, involves detecting and resolving incongruities that are present within a humorous stimulus. This is related to cognitive processes such as ambiguity resolution, response inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility, functions that are mediated in part by the dorsal portion of the striatum (DS). Humor appreciation, on the other hand, refers to the subjective amusement and mirth that one experiences in response to a joke. This is related to reward processing, which implicates the ventral portion of the striatum (VS). Across three separate studies, we investigated the involvement …
Changes In Audiovisual Integration In Aging, Alyssa S. Lynn
Changes In Audiovisual Integration In Aging, Alyssa S. Lynn
Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference
The proposed study will examine changes in audiovisual integration between younger and older adults. Audiovisual integration enables us to associate and bind related auditory and visual information and experience it as a single percept (Spence, 2007). Being able to properly integrate is crucial in our everyday lives. When perceiving speech, audiovisual integration binds visual information from lip movements with auditory information from the speaker's utterances so that speech can be perceived multimodally. With age, our auditory and visual sensory acuity tends to decline with audiovisual integration being impacted as a result (Brooks et al., 2018; Mahoney et al., 2011). We …
The Coping Strategies Of Older Adults With Age Related Vision Loss (Arvl) – A Narrative Account, Zakara J. Stampp
The Coping Strategies Of Older Adults With Age Related Vision Loss (Arvl) – A Narrative Account, Zakara J. Stampp
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
The goal of this study was to share the stories of older adults with age-related vision loss (ARVL) and how they have coped to maintain meaningful occupational engagement. Grounded in a constructivist paradigm, data collection and analysis were guided by the narrative inquiry methodology. The participants consisted of six older adults aged 60 or older, diagnosed with one of the following ARVL conditions: macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, and/or glaucoma. Participants were recruited from vision loss non-profit organizations such as the Canadian National Institute for the Blind (CNIB) and the Alliance for Equity of Blind Canadians (AEBC). One older adult was …
Neural Markers Of Musical Memory In Young And Older Adults, Avital Sternin
Neural Markers Of Musical Memory In Young And Older Adults, Avital Sternin
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
Memory for music can be preserved in the presence of neurodegenerative disorders even when other memories are forgotten. However, understanding how the brain remembers music has proven difficult despite decades of research. The central goal of this thesis was to elucidate the neural correlates of musical memory by exploring how the presence of language and music information affect the way young and older adults remember music. To that end, I 1) used a controlled training paradigm to familiarize participants with novel stimuli that manipulated the presence of language and music, and 2) collected functional magnetic resonance imaging data to compare …
The Relationship Between Theory Of Mind And Executive Function: Are They Two Facets Of The Same Process Or Two Distinct Processes?, Isu Cho
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
This dissertation examines the relationship between Theory of Mind (ToM) and Executive Function (EF). There has been debate on whether ToM and EF are two facets of the same process or are two distinct processes. Distinguishing between these possibilities empirically is challenging because the two abilities have similar developmental timetables and ToM tasks typically place high demands on EF, with the consequence that ToM and EF performance measures may be artificially correlated. Three experiments explored the nature of this relationship. Experiments 1 and 2 tested whether socio-cultural factors known to influence individual differences in EF (i.e., bilingualism, country-of-origin) extend to …
Thirty-Five Years Of Computerized Cognitive Assessment Of Aging — Where Are We Now?, Avital Sternin, Alistair Burns, Adrian M. Owen
Thirty-Five Years Of Computerized Cognitive Assessment Of Aging — Where Are We Now?, Avital Sternin, Alistair Burns, Adrian M. Owen
Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications
Over the past 35 years, the proliferation of technology and the advent of the internet have resulted in many reliable and easy to administer batteries for assessing cognitive function. These approaches have great potential for affecting how the health care system monitors and screens for cognitive changes in the aging population. Here, we review these new technologies with a specific emphasis on what they offer over and above traditional ‘paper-and-pencil’ approaches to assessing cognitive function. Key advantages include fully automated administration and scoring, the interpretation of individual scores within the context of thousands of normative data points, the inclusion of …
Moderating Effect Of Cortical Thickness On Bold Signal Variability Age-Related Changes, Daiana R. Pur, Roy A. Eagleson, Anik De Ribaupierre, Nathalie Mella, Sandrine De Ribaupierre
Moderating Effect Of Cortical Thickness On Bold Signal Variability Age-Related Changes, Daiana R. Pur, Roy A. Eagleson, Anik De Ribaupierre, Nathalie Mella, Sandrine De Ribaupierre
Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications
© Copyright © 2019 Pur, Eagleson, de Ribaupierre, Mella and de Ribaupierre. The time course of neuroanatomical structural and functional measures across the lifespan is commonly reported in association with aging. Blood oxygen-level dependent signal variability, estimated using the standard deviation of the signal, or “BOLDSD,” is an emerging metric of variability in neural processing, and has been shown to be positively correlated with cognitive flexibility. Generally, BOLDSD is reported to decrease with aging, and is thought to reflect age-related cognitive decline. Additionally, it is well established that normative aging is associated with structural changes in brain regions, and that …
Longitudinal Alzheimer's Degeneration Reflects The Spatial Topography Of Cholinergic Basal Forebrain Projections, Taylor W. Schmitz, Marieke Mur, Meghmik Aghourian, Marc Andre Bedard, R. Nathan Spreng
Longitudinal Alzheimer's Degeneration Reflects The Spatial Topography Of Cholinergic Basal Forebrain Projections, Taylor W. Schmitz, Marieke Mur, Meghmik Aghourian, Marc Andre Bedard, R. Nathan Spreng
Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications
© 2018 The Author(s) The cholinergic neurons of the basal forebrain (BF) provide virtually all of the brain's cortical and amygdalar cholinergic input. They are particularly vulnerable to neuropathology in early Alzheimer's disease (AD) and may trigger the emergence of neuropathology in their cortico-amygdalar projection system through cholinergic denervation and trans-synaptic spreading of misfolded proteins. We examined whether longitudinal degeneration within the BF can explain longitudinal cortico-amygdalar degeneration in older human adults with abnormal cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers of AD neuropathology. We focused on two BF subregions, which are known to innervate cortico-amygdalar regions via two distinct macroscopic cholinergic projections. To …
Adolescent Cannabinoid Exposure Induces A Persistent Sub-Cortical Hyper-Dopaminergic State And Associated Molecular Adaptations In The Prefrontal Cortex., Justine Renard, Laura G Rosen, Michael Loureiro, Cleusa De Oliveira, Susanne Schmid, Walter J Rushlow, Steven R Laviolette
Adolescent Cannabinoid Exposure Induces A Persistent Sub-Cortical Hyper-Dopaminergic State And Associated Molecular Adaptations In The Prefrontal Cortex., Justine Renard, Laura G Rosen, Michael Loureiro, Cleusa De Oliveira, Susanne Schmid, Walter J Rushlow, Steven R Laviolette
Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications
Considerable evidence suggests that adolescent exposure to delta-9-tetrahydrocanabinol (THC), the psychoactive component in marijuana, increases the risk of developing schizophrenia-related symptoms in early adulthood. In the present study, we used a combination of behavioral and molecular analyses with in vivo neuronal electrophysiology to compare the long-term effects of adolescent versus adulthood THC exposure in rats. We report that adolescent, but not adult, THC exposure induces long-term neuropsychiatric-like phenotypes similar to those observed in clinical populations. Thus, adolescent THC exposure induced behavioral abnormalities resembling positive and negative schizophrenia-related endophenotypes and a state of neuronal hyperactivity in the mesocorticolimbic dopamine (DA) pathway. …
Category Learning In Older Adulthood: Understanding And Reducing Age-Related Deficits, Rahel R. Rabi
Category Learning In Older Adulthood: Understanding And Reducing Age-Related Deficits, Rahel R. Rabi
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
Executive functions are important for learning rule-based (RB) categories, as well as non-rule-based (NRB) categories (e.g., categories learned implicitly, without a verbal rule). However, executive functioning is known to decline with age, leading to age-related deficits in category learning. The current thesis examines RB and NRB category learning in older adults using category sets that vary in difficulty (e.g., rule complexity, number of stimulus dimensions, salience of stimulus dimensions). In Chapter 2, older adults and younger adults completed three category sets (simple single-dimensional RB, disjunctive RB, and NRB). Older adults learned the simple, single-dimensional rules quite well. In contrast to …
Category Learning In Older Adulthood: A Study Of The Shepard, Hovland, And Jenkins (1961) Tasks., Rahel Rabi, John Paul Minda
Category Learning In Older Adulthood: A Study Of The Shepard, Hovland, And Jenkins (1961) Tasks., Rahel Rabi, John Paul Minda
Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications
Shepard, Hovland, and Jenkins (1961) examined the categorization abilities of younger adults using tasks involving single-dimensional rule learning, disjunctive rule learning, and family resemblance learning. The current study examined category learning in older adults using this well-known category set. Older adults, like younger adults, found category tasks with a single relevant dimension the easiest to learn. In contrast to younger adults, older adults found complex disjunctive rule-based categories harder to learn than family resemblance based categories. Disjunctive rule-based category learning appeared to be the most difficult for older adults to learn because this category set placed the heaviest demands on …
Fusion Analysis Of Functional Mri Data For Classification Of Individuals Based On Patterns Of Activation., Mahdi Ramezani, Purang Abolmaesumi, Kris Marble, Heather Trang, Ingrid Johnsrude
Fusion Analysis Of Functional Mri Data For Classification Of Individuals Based On Patterns Of Activation., Mahdi Ramezani, Purang Abolmaesumi, Kris Marble, Heather Trang, Ingrid Johnsrude
Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications
Classification of individuals based on patterns of brain activity observed in functional MRI contrasts may be helpful for diagnosis of neurological disorders. Prior work for classification based on these patterns have primarily focused on using a single contrast, which does not take advantage of complementary information that may be available in multiple contrasts. Where multiple contrasts are used, the objective has been only to identify the joint, distinct brain activity patterns that differ between groups of subjects; not to use the information to classify individuals. Here, we use joint Independent Component Analysis (jICA) within a Support Vector Machine (SVM) classification …
Deficits In Audiovisual Speech Perception In Normal Aging Emerge At The Level Of Whole-Word Recognition., Ryan A Stevenson, Caitlin E Nelms, Sarah H Baum, Lilia Zurkovsky, Morgan D Barense, Paul A Newhouse, Mark T Wallace
Deficits In Audiovisual Speech Perception In Normal Aging Emerge At The Level Of Whole-Word Recognition., Ryan A Stevenson, Caitlin E Nelms, Sarah H Baum, Lilia Zurkovsky, Morgan D Barense, Paul A Newhouse, Mark T Wallace
Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications
Over the next 2 decades, a dramatic shift in the demographics of society will take place, with a rapid growth in the population of older adults. One of the most common complaints with healthy aging is a decreased ability to successfully perceive speech, particularly in noisy environments. In such noisy environments, the presence of visual speech cues (i.e., lip movements) provide striking benefits for speech perception and comprehension, but previous research suggests that older adults gain less from such audiovisual integration than their younger peers. To determine at what processing level these behavioral differences arise in healthy-aging populations, we administered …
Stability Of Self-Referent Encoding Task Performance And Associations With Change In Depressive Symptoms From Early To Middle Childhood., Brandon L Goldstein, Elizabeth P Hayden, Daniel N Klein
Stability Of Self-Referent Encoding Task Performance And Associations With Change In Depressive Symptoms From Early To Middle Childhood., Brandon L Goldstein, Elizabeth P Hayden, Daniel N Klein
Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications
Depressed individuals exhibit memory biases on the self-referent encoding task (SRET), such that those with depression exhibit poorer recall of positive, and enhanced recall of negative, trait adjectives (referred to as positive and negative processing biases). However, it is unclear when SRET biases emerge, whether they are stable, and if biases predict, or are predicted by, depressive symptoms. To address this, a community sample of 434 children completed the SRET and a depressive symptoms measure at ages 6 and 9. Negative and positive processing exhibited low, but significant, stability. At ages 6 and 9, depressive symptoms correlated with higher negative, …
Anosognosia In Mild Cognitive Impairment: Relationship To Activation Of Cortical Midline Structures Involved In Self-Appraisal, Michele L. Ries, Britta M. Jabbar, Taylor W. Schmitz, Mehul A. Trivedi, Carey E. Gleason, Cynthia M. Carlsson, Howard A. Rowley, Sanjay Asthana, Sterling C. Johnson
Anosognosia In Mild Cognitive Impairment: Relationship To Activation Of Cortical Midline Structures Involved In Self-Appraisal, Michele L. Ries, Britta M. Jabbar, Taylor W. Schmitz, Mehul A. Trivedi, Carey E. Gleason, Cynthia M. Carlsson, Howard A. Rowley, Sanjay Asthana, Sterling C. Johnson
Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications
Awareness of cognitive dysfunction shown by individuals with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), a condition conferring risk for Alzheimer's disease (AD), is variable. Anosognosia, or unawareness of loss of function, is beginning to be recognized as an important clinical symptom of MCI. However, little is known about the brain substrates underlying this symptom. We hypothesized that MCI participants' activation of cortical midline structures (CMS) during self-appraisal would covary with level of insight into cognitive difficulties (indexed by a discrepancy score between patient and informant ratings of cognitive decline in each MCI participant). To address this hypothesis, we first compared 16 MCI …
Spirituality In Late Adulthood, Lisa M. Heintz, Imants Barušs
Spirituality In Late Adulthood, Lisa M. Heintz, Imants Barušs
Psychology
MacDonald's Expressions of Spirituality Inventory was used to examine spirituality in late adulthood using a sample of 30 people (22 women, 8 men) whose mean age was 72.6 yr. While average scores are higher on scales measuring spiritual and religious beliefs and practices for the sample than for a standardization group of undergraduate students with a mean age of 21.0 yr., means are lower on scales measuring paranormal beliefs. Low scores on death anxiety are correlated only with Existential Well-being and age. And, while some religious behaviors such as frequent religious practice, prayer, and church attendance are correlated with some …