What the Concentration Study Revealed
- Investigators found that middle-aged adults performed just as accurately as younger adults on encoding and recognition tasks, but brain scanning revealed that functional changes start to appear as early as middle age.
- The study reported that these brain changes are gradual and don’t translate into a noticeable change in memory performance for that age group.
- Scanning also revealed that functional brain changes and associated deficits in cognitive performance (i.e. lower accuracy scores particularly in recall tests) become more pronounced after the age of 65. The altered activity level in medial frontal and parietal regions in older adults is similar to that seen in patients with Alzheimer’s, although less pronounced.
- Because most of the participants in the study were fairly well educated, brain changes without accompanying behavioral changes in the middle-aged group may reflect what previous scientific studies have termed the “protective effect” on behavior. “Higher education levels may allow for some redundancy of brain function or compensation that leads to preserved performance in middle-aged adults, at least on some tests, despite altered brain activity,” says Dr. Grady.
A Suggestion About Concentration for Older Adults
The Rotman scientists said the study confirms that age-related changes in brain function are happening across various memory tasks, and these changes progress in a linear fashion as adults age.
This prompted Dr. Grady to offer a cautionary message for aging adults:
“Older adults should try to reduce distractions in their environment and concentrate on one key attentional task at a time. It may be as easy as turning down the radio when reading, or staying off the cell phone when driving a car.”
Source: The Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest and the University of Toronto, reported in the February 2006 issue of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Vol. 18, No. 2.
