Specificity of inhibitory deficits in normal aging and Alzheimer's disease

Abstract

Deficits of suppression abilities are frequently observed in normal aging and Alzheimer's disease.However, few studies have explored these deficits in the two populations simultaneously using a large battery of tasks. The aim of the present study was to explore if the pattern of performance presented by elderly subjects and AD patients is in agreement with theoretical frameworks [104; see also 81], distinguishing between the concepts of inhibition (a voluntary suppression of irrelevant information) and interference (an automatic suppression process occurring prior to conscious awareness). The results obtained demonstrated that (1) there is an alteration of the inhibitory process in normal elderly subjects; (2) inhibitory and interference resolution processes are quantitately less efficient in AD, since these patients present a correct performance only for information which leaves weak traces in memory.

Event-Related Brain Potentials in the Study of Inhibition: Cognitive Control, Source Localization and Age-Related Modulations

“…A distinctive interest of this review is the effects of normal aging on inhibition, as reflected by changes in processing that occur at a fine-grained temporal scale. As previously discussed, normal aging selectivity affects some inhibitory processes while sparing other processes (Andres et al 2008;Collette et al 2009), and temporally detailed analyses of inhibitory processing may greatly enhance the characterization of these differential effects.…”

“…Inhibition has received labels such as "interference" (Piai et al 2012) and "suppression" (Ludowig et al 2010) to highlight its automatic nature (implicit or unintentional inhibitory processes) and controlled nature (explicit or intentional inhibitory processes), respectively (Nigg 2000;Friedman and Miyake 2004;Andres et al 2008;Collette et al 2009). This theoretical construct of the level of control that is needed in a cognitive process, in this case inhibition, was initially proposed by Shiffrin and colleagues (for a review, see Shiffrin and Schneider 1977).…”

“…A number of studies have established and examined specific categories of inhibitory phenomena, such as response or motor inhibition (the process of inhibiting a planned response or movement; Robinson et al 2013), lateral inhibition (the capacity of an excited neuron to reduce the activity of its neighbors ;Bridgeman 2006), prepulse inhibition (when a stimulus inhibits the startle blink reflex to a subsequent stronger startle stimulus; Dawson et al 2004), inhibition of return (inhibition produced by a peripheral cue or target; Possin et al 2009), knowledge or semantic inhibition (inhibition responsible for reducing the activation of the inappropriate knowledge for the context; Debruille 2007), and proactive interference (i.e., the disruption of behaviour due to the influence of antecedent inforation that is no longer relevant and has to be inhibited; Yi and Friedman 2011). In opposition to these types of inhibition, several authors (Hasher and Zacks 1988;Collette et al 2009) have proposed that inhibition is a 4 unitary process that integrates the following three different but related functions: the access function (responsible for the prevention of irrelevant information entry); the deletion function (responsible for the suppression of information that either is or has become irrelevant); and the restrain function (responsible for the prevention of access to relevant but contextually inappropriate responses).…”

“…with impaired performance in Stroop or Stop-Signal paradigms when compared with young adults; Andres et al 2008) but not in processes that can be considered more automatic or unintentional (e.g. equal performance when compared with young adults in NP or Spatial Cueing paradigms; Amieva et al 2002;Andres et al 2008;Collette et al 2009). …”

“…Several of these studies have examined the relevance of inhibitory processes in normal aging (Mayas et al 2012;Turner and Spreng 2012;Haring et al 2013;Wostmann et al 2013), as well as a variety of clinical conditions, such as Alzheimer's disease (AD; Collette et al 2009; C. Thomas et al 2010;Cheng et al 2012), mild cognitive impairment (MCI; Belleville et al 2007), traumatic brain injury (TBI; Dimoska-Di Marco et al 2011), depression (Dai and Feng 2011;Bobb et al 2012), anxiety (Robinson et al 2013), schizophrenia (Hughes et al 2012), fibromyalgia (Mercado et al 2013), attention deficithyperactivity disorder (ADHD; Senderecka et al 2012), alcoholism (Padilla et al 2011) and psychopathy (Verona et al 2012). Thomas et al 2009); Stop-signal (Bekker et al 2005;van Boxtel et al 2001);Eriksen Flanker (Wild-Wall et al 2008;Neuhaus et al 2007); Stroop (Hanslmayr et al 2008); and NP (Gibbons et al 2006;Kathmann et al 2006).…”