Benefits Of Cognitive Aging

Once you reach a certain point in your life how do you just forgot? Is there a certain point in your life where your memory is affected? The common question going around is does your memory decline with age. One reason this is important because it will affect all of us. We will all get old and this can greatly affect our health. The research can show how our older age will affect our memory.

There are people who think that older adults are not capable of learning new information because of the number of neurons in their brain decline as they age. In the PBS video “Stealing Time”, the old cage potato rats were given a change of scene with an enriched environment and the results were that their dendrites grew and made new synaptic connections where there were none before. These rats were better on future tasks than the old rats that were not given a change of scene. When older adults are doing a task in a laboratory setting they are less efficient at processing the information presented to them and their reaction time is slower. “Older adults show more brain activity between the prefrontal cortex and the medial temporal lobe than

Cognitive aging is the term to describe changes in cognition with age. While Salthouse (2004) found that with cognitive aging comes cognitive decline regardless of the individual, Hayden and partners (2011) found that most (65%) elderly persons showed slow decline that does not substantially affect abilities, 27% experienced moderate decline, and only 8% showed substantial cognitive decline. These new findings show that in fact there may be individual variability when it comes to cognitive aging. One factor shown to affect cognitive aging is race (Glymour and Manly, 2008). Thus, in this paper we will review and analyze findings pertaining to cognitive aging as related by race to better understand this relationship and will also discuss suggestions for future research.

Age associated declines in cognitive processes are important to the understanding of the human mind. This study investigates the relationship between ageing and short term memory in particular, by first exploring current cognitive and neuroscientific research involving concepts such as short term/working memory, long term memory and ageing, and secondly, by means of a short term memory experiment involving verbal and numerical stimuli, that was administered to two age groups- 20 to 40 year old adults and 50 to 70 year olds. The results of the experiment were then analysed using the ANOVA statistical software programme. The results did not conclusively show age related decline

When aging statistics are looked upon in a positive light, it shows that 90-94% of people aged 65 or older and 70% of people aged 85 years or older are unlikely to experience the effects of dementia (Chapman et al 2). This means that the majority of seniors will remain present in their minds and have the ability to function cognitively equal to anyone else. In addition, recent research reveals “[t]he effects of the aging process itself have been exaggerated, and the modifying effects of diet, exercise, personal habits, and psychosocial factors underestimated” (Rowe and Kahn 143). Older adults who practice a healthy lifestyle, remain active and involved in their community, significantly lower

As we age, it is natural for cognitive deterioration, however if this deterioration significantly impairs one’s independence, a diagnosis of major neurocognitive disorder is given There are currently 24 to 36 million people with neurocognitive disorders around the world, with 4.6 million new cases emerging each year (Hollingworth, P., Harold, D., Jones, L., Owen, M. J., & Williams, J. (2011); Ames, D., Chiu, E., Lindsesay, J., & Shulman, K. I., 2010). Those suffering with a neurocognitive disorder experience a significant decline in facets of cognitive function such as: memory and learning, attention, perceptual motor skills, planning and decision making, language ability, or social cognition (APA, 2013, 2012). Alzheimer’s disease is the most

One cognitive defect affecting elderly patients is Alzheimer's disease. This cognitive disease affects many populations around the world, but mainly aging individuals3. Though the quantity of life is extending with modern medical practices4,

Over the centuries, the term dementia has evolved from one that described any change in intellect or judgement in the elderly, to a collection of cognitive and behavioral symptoms correlated with specific neuropathology. The aging process is thought to have three possible cognitive outcomes: (1) normal age related decline, which is often described as normal and healthy aging; (2) age associated memory impairment, which is not as severe and does not have all of the features of dementia; (3) dementia, for which there are many types (Christensen & O’Brien, 2000).

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a commonly diagnosed brain disorder that deteriorates memory and thought skills progressively and irreversibly eventually culminating in the loss of ability to perform ordinary tasks. As the most common form of dementia, it’s prevalence affects 5.3 million Americans. The United States is an aging population, with an aging index of 66 people age sixty-five and older for every 100 children age fifteen and under, in 2010 (Jacobsen, 2014). AD has a current incidence rate (number of new cases of AD in a population at a given time) of 54/1,000 in people ages 65 and up, with rates predicted to double in the near future (Alzheimer's disease & dementia.). Globally more than 25 Million people suffer from AD. The mortality

As people age over time, they have a way of changing both psychological and biological. These changes affect everyone in different ways and the changes that can take place over the years can vary from individual to individual. “For the human brain, there's no such thing as over the hill. Psychologists researching the normal changes of aging have found that although some aspects of memory and processing change as people get older, simple behavior changes can help people stay sharp for as long as possible. Although researchers are still piecing together what happens in a healthy aging brain, they can explain some typical changes” (Memory Changes in Older Adults, 2006).

There have been a number of studies that have used both cross-sectional and longitudinal methods. In two cross-sectional analyses of 77 (mean age = 50.5, S.D. = 16.7) and then 127 participants (mean age = 45.9, S.D. = 15.5), Salthouse and colleagues (1996) found that the relationship between sensory functioning (near visual acuity) and cognition (working memory, associative learning, and concept identification) increased with age. With a similar cross-sectional approach, Baltes and colleagues (1997) analyzed data from two large age groups: a younger adult sample (25-69 years, n = 171, mean age = 48.2, SD = 14.7) and an older adult sample (70 – 103 years, n = 516, mean age = 84.9, SD = 8.66).

As we grow older we are challenged not only by our physical limitations, but also by our cognitive ones. Many older adults are handicapped by mental constraints while the majority are also experiencing a decline in cognitive capacity. It is estimated that 24 million people are suffering from dementia (Ballard et al., 2011). Because this number is so large growing older is often associated with memory loss along with other mental deficits. This is not always the case though and it is not just older adults’ cognitive function declining with age. To help me understand cognitive aging more fully I spoke with Jane, this is a pseudonym.

In fact, cognitive abilities gradually decline as time progresses. From the observation, it was seen that a considerable number of the seniors in the room were not able to remember or recall certain names of the volunteers. A physiological explanation for this involves the neurons of the brain. As age progresses, the fibers of the neurons’ axons twist to form neurofibrillary tangles (Kail & Cavanuagh, 2016). The causes of neurofibrillary tangles are unknown; however, the structure of the axons make it for difficult for signals to be transmitted and relayed from neuron to neuron. In late adulthood, information processing speed declines because of how the central nervous system has been deteriorating over time (Shaban, 2017). Some examples of illnesses that illustrate this process are dementia and Alzheimer’s. In both illnesses, elderly individuals are not able to store, process, and retrieve information as quickly as younger individuals. Seniors take a longer time to learn and retain new information. According to the World Health Organization, approximately 15% of old aged people suffer from mental disorders (Choolayil, 2017). The quality of cognitive abilities can either be maintained or declined depending on how frequently the individual “exercises” his or her brain. Seniors can practice and hone their critical and abstract thinking skills. The observed seniors had the opportunity to keep their minds active by participating in activities such as reading books, doing arts and crafts, or playing crossword or puzzle games. If the brain is continually inclined to think and discover, the likelihood of developing mental disorders or cognitive impairment

When the recent focus is mainly on studying memory decline that is caused by diseases, memory decline that occurs with normal aging is being disregarded. According to Daselaar and Cabeza, it is important to confine between normal age-related memory decline and the one that is caused by a disease, such as Alzheimer’s, so the person can be provided with the proper treatment at the right time (Daselaar and Cabeza 2008, 577). In my point of view, the main focus of these studies should be on episodic memory, because it is affected the most by aging in comparison to other long-term memory components such as semantic and implicit memory. Denice C. Park and her coworkers have shown in their research (2002) that as verbal knowledge increases across the life span, processing-intensive tasks start to decline since we are on our 20’s. These include for example long term memory, speed of processing, and short term memory; with long-term memory being significantly the most responsive to decline. Since long-term memory has been found to be the most sensitive to age-related cognitive changes, the onset time of this decline has been studied

The author of this article hypothesized that, as individuals grow older memory retention declines, however, not all characteristics of memory are weakened. This article is made up of three sections; Review of Empirical Findings, Aging and Memory: Theoretical Perspectives, and Aging and Memory: Neuropsychological Underpinnings. The first section will inform the reader by using examples that were used to study different parts of memory and conclusions that the researchers have agreed