Visual object pattern separation varies in older adults

Holden, H.; Toner, Chelsea; Pirogovsky, Eva; Kirwan, C. Brock; Gilbert, Paul E.

doi:10.1101/lm.030171.112

Cited by 64 publications

(72 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…First, a majority of aged rats were impaired on spatial discriminations in which the distance between target and foil locations was ,88 cm. These data support an emerging consensus in the field of cognitive aging that age-associated discrimination deficits in humans and animal models are observed when the test stimuli are similar or share common features (Stark et al 2010(Stark et al , 2013Burke et al 2011;Yassa et al 2011a,b;Ryan et al 2012;Holden et al 2013;Reagh et al 2014Reagh et al , 2016. Moreover, the observation that a subset of aged rats were Figure 5.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

“…In support of this interpretation, discrimination abilities are impaired in healthy aged humans (Toner et al 2009;Stark et al 2010Stark et al , 2013Holden et al 2012Holden et al , 2013Ryan et al 2012;Reagh et al 2014Reagh et al , 2016, monkeys (Burke et al 2011), and rats (Burke et al 2010(Burke et al , 2011). An intriguing aspect of these deficits is that older adults who do not show episodic memory loss can be impaired relative to young adults at difficult discriminations between similar stimuli, but not easy discriminations between unique stimuli (Stark et al 2013;Reagh et al 2014Reagh et al , 2016.…”

mentioning

confidence: 85%

“…In contrast to animal studies, the majority of discrimination studies in humans have used pictures of common objects as stimuli (Toner et al 2009;Yassa et al 2011a,b;Holden et al 2013;Stark et al 2013;Reagh et al 2014Reagh et al , 2016. Performing these tasks therefore presumably draws on brain networks required for object processing, such as the perirhinal cortex.…”

Section: Spatial Memory and Spatial Discrimination Abilities: Implicamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Discrimination performance in aging is vulnerable to interference and dissociable from spatial memory

et al. 2016

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Hippocampal-dependent episodic memory and stimulus discrimination abilities are both compromised in the elderly. The reduced capacity to discriminate between similar stimuli likely contributes to multiple aspects of age-related cognitive impairment; however, the association of these behaviors within individuals has never been examined in an animal model. In the present study, young and aged F344×BN F1 hybrid rats were cross-characterized on the Morris water maze test of spatial memory and a dentate gyrus-dependent match-to-position test of spatial discrimination ability. Aged rats showed overall impairments relative to young in spatial learning and memory on the water maze task. Although young and aged learned to apply a match-to-position response strategy in performing easy spatial discriminations within a similar number of trials, a majority of aged rats were impaired relative to young in performing difficult spatial discriminations on subsequent tests. Moreover, all aged rats were susceptible to cumulative interference during spatial discrimination tests, such that error rate increased on later trials of test sessions. These data suggest that when faced with difficult discriminations, the aged rats were less able to distinguish current goal locations from those of previous trials. Increasing acetylcholine levels with donepezil did not improve aged rats' abilities to accurately perform difficult spatial discriminations or reduce their susceptibility to interference. Interestingly, better spatial memory abilities were not significantly associated with higher performance on difficult spatial discriminations. This observation, along with the finding that aged rats made more errors under conditions in which interference was high, suggests that match-to-position spatial discrimination performance may rely on extra-hippocampal structures such as the prefrontal cortex, in addition to the dentate gyrus.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 82%

mentioning

confidence: 85%

Section: Spatial Memory and Spatial Discrimination Abilities: Implicamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Discrimination performance in aging is vulnerable to interference and dissociable from spatial memory

et al. 2016

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“…First, patients and healthy controls were tightly matched on age because it has been demonstrated that pattern separation performance is negatively correlated with age (Holden, Toner, Pirogovsky, Kirwan, & Gilbert, 2013;Stark, Yassa, Lacy, & Stark, 2013). Second, patients and controls performed equally in the CSCT, excluding encoding deficit due to impaired attention or slowing of information processing speed.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pattern separation performance is decreased in patients with early multiple sclerosis

et al. 2017

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“…Indeed, a growing body of evidence suggests that older adults exhibit a deficit in encoding new memories so that they are distinct from previously stored items. In other words, they show impaired pattern separation (Carr, Castel & Knowlton, 2015;Holden, Toner, Pirogovsky, Kirwan & Gilbert, 2013). For example, recent research suggests that visual recognition impairments in older adults are due to an impaired ability to identify stimulus novelty (Yassa & Stark, 2008).…”

Section: Time Manages Interference 3 Time Manages Interference In Vismentioning

confidence: 99%

Time manages interference in visual short-term memory

Smith

McKeown

Bunce

2017

Memory

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Emerging evidence suggests that age-related declines in memory may reflect a failure in pattern separation, a process that is believed to reduce the encoding overlap between similar stimulus representations during memory encoding. Indeed, behavioural pattern separation may be indexed by a visual continuous recognition task in which items are presented in sequence and observers report for each whether it is novel, previously viewed (old), or whether it shares features with a previously viewed item (similar). In comparison to young adults, older adults show a decreased pattern separation when the number of items between 'old' and 'similar' items is increased. Yet the mechanisms of forgetting underpinning this type of recognition task are yet to be explored in a cognitively homogenous group, with careful control over the parameters of the task, including elapsing time (a critical variable in models of forgetting). By extending the inter-item intervals, number of intervening items, and overall decay interval, we observed in a young adult sample (N=35, Mage=19.56years) that the critical factor governing performance was inter-item interval. We argue that tasks using behavioural continuous recognition to index pattern separation in immediate memory will benefit from generous inter-item spacing, offering protection from inter-item interference.

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Visual object pattern separation varies in older adults

Cited by 64 publications

References 54 publications

Discrimination performance in aging is vulnerable to interference and dissociable from spatial memory

Discrimination performance in aging is vulnerable to interference and dissociable from spatial memory

Pattern separation performance is decreased in patients with early multiple sclerosis

Time manages interference in visual short-term memory

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