It was the best of times, it was the worst of times: a psychophysiologist's view of cognitive aging.
This paper reviews research on age-related changes in working memory and attention control. This work is interpreted within a framework labeled "GOLDEN aging" (growing of lifelong differences explains normal aging), which is based on the idea that normal aging (as opposed to pathological aging) represents maturational processes causing progressive shifts in the distributions of mental abilities over the lifespan. As such, brain phenomena observed in normal aging are already apparent, under appropriate conditions, in younger adults. Among the phenomena that can be interpreted according to the GOLDEN aging framework are reductions in working memory capacity, impairments of inhibitory processes, increases in frontal lobe activation, and lack of suppression of responses as a function of repetition.
Department of Psychology and Beckman Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana-Champaign, IL 61801, USA. mfabiani@illinois.edu
Monica
M
Fabiani
D000375:Aging / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D058245:Cognitive Reserve / Q000502:physiology; D059907:Functional Neuroimaging; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography