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42 Age-Related Alterations in Representational Forms of Imagination: A Novel Scoring Protocol Applied to Autobiographical Memory
- Mariam Hovhannisyan, Nadine Chau, Austin Deffner, Jessica R Andrews-Hanna, Matthew D Grilli
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- Journal:
- Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society / Volume 29 / Issue s1 / November 2023
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 21 December 2023, pp. 351-352
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Objective:
Human imagination is a complex system that allows us to form images or concepts in the mind that are not present to the senses. Research on imagination has been heavily influenced by the idea that humans store two distinct types of long-term memory: episodic and semantic memory. This theoretical distinction is particularly important in the context of aging, where older adults show reduced episodic memory compared to semantic memory (Levine et al., 2002). However, recent work has shown that these two memories are not as distinct as once thought (Renoult et al., 2019; Irish & Vatansever, 2020), suggesting a need to either refine the relationship between these concepts, or the concepts themselves.
Here, we apply a broader framework for imagination to the autobiographical memories of older adults. Introduced by Andrews-Hanna & Grilli (2021), memory and future thoughts can be understood as the outcome of the collaboration between two representational forms of imagination: the mind’s mind and the mind’s eye. The mind’s mind is described as a high-level, abstract form of imagination accompanied by a verbal representational form, and the mind’s eye is described as a contextually-specific, image-based form of imagination. In the present study, we examine whether this broader framework for understanding imaginative thought can a) explain some of the established age-related changes in episodic and semantic memory, and b) extend beyond existing research to offer new ways to conceptualize autobiographical memory in aging.
Participants and Methods:In this study, we introduce a novel scoring protocol distinguishing mind’s eye from mind’s mind forms of imagination and apply this protocol to the autobiographical memories of eighty-two cognitively normal older adults. Participants were instructed to retrieve unique autobiographical events, and to focus on describing event-specific details. All data were scored both with our new scoring protocol as well as the Autobiographical Interview scoring protocol from Levine et al. (2002).
Results:Our novel scoring protocol demonstrated high inter-rater reliability across two raters for both mind’s mind (0.95) and mind’s eye (0.96) details. First, we show that the proportion of mind’s mind and mind’s eye details on average are significantly different, with an increased proportion of mind’s eye details. Second, we find that both mind’s eye detail production and mind’s mind detail production is significantly reduced with age, whereas only internal details decline across age when scored with the Autobiographical Interview scoring procedure.
Conclusions:The new scoring protocol suggests that both mind’s mind and mind’s eye details undergo change with age, a finding that shares similarities and differences with results from the Autobiographical Interview scoring technique. Taken together, our results hint at a more elaborate set of detail types forming autobiographical memories that change with age, with implications for understanding episodic and semantic memory.
38 Real-World Goal Setting and Follow Through in Young and Older Adults
- Lauren E Cruz, Christopher X Griffith, Caity Cegavsky, Hannah Burns, Jessica R Andrews-Hanna, Matthew D Grilli
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- Journal:
- Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society / Volume 29 / Issue s1 / November 2023
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 21 December 2023, pp. 348-349
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Objective:
The ability to generate, plan for, and follow through with goals is essential to everyday functioning. Compared to young adults, cognitively normal older adults have more difficulty on a variety of cognitive functions that contribute to goal setting and follow through. However, how these age-related cognitive differences impact real-world goal planning and success remains unclear. In the current study, we aimed to better understand the impact of older age on everyday goal planning and success.
Participants and Methods:Cognitively normal young adults (18-35 years, n= 57) and older adults (60-80 years, n= 49) participated in a 10-day 2-session study. In the first session, participants described 4 real-world goals that they hoped to pursue in the next 10 days. These goals were subjectively rated for personal significance, significance to others, and vividness, and goal descriptions were objectively scored for temporal, spatial, and event specificity, among other measures. Ten days later, participants rated the degree to which they planned for and made progress in their real-world goals since session one. Older adults also completed a battery of neuropsychological tests.
Results:Some key results are as follows. Relative to the young adults, cognitively normal older adults described real-world goals which navigated smaller spaces (p=0.01) and that they perceived as more important to other people (p=0.03). Older adults also planned more during the 10-day window (p<0.001). There was not a statistically significant age group difference, however, in real-world goal progress (p=0.65). Nonetheless, among older participants, goal progress was related to higher mental processing speed as shown by the Trail Making Test Part A (r=0.36, p=0.02) and the creation of goals confined to specific temporal periods (r=0.35, p=0.01). Older participants who scored lower on the Rey Complex Figure Test (RCFT) long delay recall trial reported that their goals were more like ones that they had set in the past (r= -0.34, p=0.02), and higher episodic memory as shown by the RCFT was associated with more spatially specific goals (r=0.32, p=0.02), as well as a greater use of implementation intentions in goal descriptions(r=0.35, p=0.02).
Conclusions:Although older adults tend to show decline in several cognitive domains relevant to goal setting, we found that cognitively normal older adults did not make significantly less progress toward a series of real-world goals over a 10-day window. However, relative to young adults, older adults tended to pursue goals which were more important to others, as well as goals that involved navigating smaller spaces. Older adults also appear to rely on planning more than young adults to make progress toward their goals. These findings reveal age group differences in the quality of goals and individual differences in goal success among older adults. They are also in line with prior research suggesting that cognitive aging effects may be more subtle in real-world contexts.
Transdiagnostic and disease-specific abnormalities in the default-mode network hubs in psychiatric disorders: A meta-analysis of resting-state functional imaging studies
- Gaelle E. Doucet, Delfina Janiri, Rebecca Howard, Madeline O’Brien, Jessica R. Andrews-Hanna, Sophia Frangou
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- Journal:
- European Psychiatry / Volume 63 / Issue 1 / 2020
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 29 May 2020, e57
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Background.
The default mode network (DMN) dysfunction has emerged as a consistent biological correlate of multiple psychiatric disorders. Specifically, there is evidence of alterations in DMN cohesiveness in schizophrenia, mood and anxiety disorders. The aim of this study was to synthesize at a fine spatial resolution the intra-network functional connectivity of the DMN in adults diagnosed with schizophrenia, mood and anxiety disorders, capitalizing on powerful meta-analytic tools provided by activation likelihood estimation.
Methods.Results from 70 whole-brain resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging articles published during the last 15 years were included comprising observations from 2,789 patients and 3,002 healthy controls.
Results.Specific regional changes in DMN cohesiveness located in the anteromedial and posteromedial cortex emerged as shared and trans-diagnostic brain phenotypes. Disease-specific dysconnectivity was also identified. Unmedicated patients showed more DMN functional alterations, highlighting the importance of interventions targeting the functional integration of the DMN.
Conclusion.This study highlights functional alteration in the major hubs of the DMN, suggesting common abnormalities in self-referential mental activity across psychiatric disorders.