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Perceptual Priming Can Increase or Decrease With Aging.

ABSTRACT: A decline in declarative or explicit memory has been extensively characterized in cognitive aging and is a hallmark of cognitive impairments. However, whether and how implicit perceptual memory varies with aging or cognitive impairment is unclear. Here, we compared implicit perceptual memory and explicit memory measures in three groups of participants: (1) 59 healthy young volunteers (20-30 years); (2) 269 healthy old volunteers (50-90 years) and (3) 21 patients with mild cognitive impairment, i.e., MCI (50-90 years). To measure explicit memory, participants were tested on standard recognition and recall tasks. To measure implicit perceptual memory, we used a classic perceptual priming paradigm. Participants had to report the shape of a visual search pop-out target whose color or position was varied randomly across trials. Perceptual priming was measured as the speedup in response time for targets that repeated in color or position. Our main findings are as follows: (1) Explicit memory was weaker in old compared to young participants, and in MCI patients compared to age- and education-matched controls; (2) Surprisingly, perceptual priming did not always decline with age: color priming was smaller in older participants but position priming was larger; (3) Position priming was less frequent in the MCI group compared to matched controls; (4) Perceptual priming and explicit memory were uncorrelated across participants. Thus, perceptual priming can increase or decrease with age or cognitive impairment, but these changes do not covary with explicit memory.

SUBMITTER: Zhivago KA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7711047 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Perceptual Priming Can Increase or Decrease With Aging.

Zhivago Kalathupiriyan A KA Shashidhara Sneha S Garani Ranjini R Purokayastha Simran S Rao Naren P NP Murthy Aditya A Arun S P SP

Frontiers in aging neuroscience 20201119

A decline in declarative or explicit memory has been extensively characterized in cognitive aging and is a hallmark of cognitive impairments. However, whether and how implicit perceptual memory varies with aging or cognitive impairment is unclear. Here, we compared implicit perceptual memory and explicit memory measures in three groups of participants: (1) 59 healthy young volunteers (20-30 years); (2) 269 healthy old volunteers (50-90 years) and (3) 21 patients with mild cognitive impairment, i ...[more]

PMID: 33328959

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Project description:Intrusive memories are a hallmark symptom of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). They reflect excessive and uncontrolled retrieval of the traumatic memory. Acute elevations of cortisol are known to impair the retrieval of already stored memory information. Thus, continuous cortisol administration might help in reducing intrusive memories in PTSD. Strong perceptual priming for neutral stimuli associated with a "traumatic" context has been shown to be one important learning mechanism that leads to intrusive memories. However, the memory modulating effects of cortisol have only been shown for explicit declarative memory processes. Thus, in our double blind, placebo controlled study we aimed to investigate whether cortisol influences perceptual priming of neutral stimuli that appeared in a "traumatic" context. Two groups of healthy volunteers (N?=?160) watched either neutral or "traumatic" picture stories on a computer screen. Neutral objects were presented in between the pictures. Memory for these neutral objects was tested after 24 hours with a perceptual priming task and an explicit memory task. Prior to memory testing half of the participants in each group received 25 mg of cortisol, the other half received placebo. In the placebo group participants in the "traumatic" stories condition showed more perceptual priming for the neutral objects than participants in the neutral stories condition, indicating a strong perceptual priming effect for neutral stimuli presented in a "traumatic" context. In the cortisol group this effect was not present: Participants in the neutral stories and participants in the "traumatic" stories condition in the cortisol group showed comparable priming effects for the neutral objects. Our findings show that cortisol inhibits perceptual priming for neutral stimuli that appeared in a "traumatic" context. These findings indicate that cortisol influences PTSD-relevant memory processes and thus further support the idea that administration of cortisol might be an effective treatment strategy in reducing intrusive reexperiencing.

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Perceptual Priming Can Increase or Decrease With Aging.

Publications

Perceptual Priming Can Increase or Decrease With Aging.

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