from Part II - Mechanisms of Cognitive Aging
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2020
Age-related changes in memory are a common but worrisome occurrence in many people’s lives. However, these changes are not ubiquitous. Healthy aging appears to impact memory for associative/relational details, i.e., the ability to recollect, more so than memory for item information. We propose that alterations in the recruitment of prefrontally mediated cognitive control processes, such as strategy use and inhibitory control, underlie these age-related memory deficits in healthy adults. These processes are particularly critical for remembering specific relational details and for being able to resolve interference between competing memories. Critically, evidence suggests that while there are large individual differences in the impact of aging on memory, various methods of support/intervention can improve memory performance in healthy older adults. We discuss how recent developments in neuroscience analysis methods have enhanced our understanding of how aging affects the control processes that support episodic learning and retrieval. We further suggest that future studies should test more diverse samples of adults and assess the role of lifestyle factors on individual differences in patterns of episodic memory performance and supporting brain activity and structure.
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