Researchers at Washington University have found that the memory deficits often associated with old age may be alleviated by specific behavioral training. Their findings appear in the February 28 issue of Neuron (available online at this URL). They were presented in a symposium and preceding press conference at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meeting in Boston on Saturday.
In their study, Buckner and colleagues asked older and younger subjects to memorize words and faces, and monitored their brains while they performed this task.
Older subjects found it harder to remember both words and faces, and their brain scans showed less activation of the prefrontal cortex, a region in our brain that controls working memory. However, several other frontal regions of their brains were strongly activated compared to those of younger subjects.
The research team then modified the task so that the subjects had to actively think about the meaning of the word before remembering it. This variation not only improved the older subjects' performance dramatically, but also restored activation of the prefrontal cortex. Intriguingly, the over-activation of other frontal regions was not decreased.
These results suggest that there are two dissociable aspects of memory decline with age: under-utilization of the prefrontal cortex and accompanying over-activation of other brain areas.
Encouragingly, one of them can be alleviated by special strategies. As the authors of the study point out, this opens up the possibility of training individuals to recover the function of their under-utilized brain regions and hence improve their memory.
[Contact: Randy L. Buckner]
18-Feb-2002
