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Age and extraversion differences in heart rate reactivity during working memory tasks.

ABSTRACT: Research and theory have shown a link between heart rate reactivity during cognitive testing and extraversion in younger adults; however, similar work has not been conducted with older adults. This study was designed to explore age and extraversion-related differences in within-person heart rate (HR) reactivity during two working memory tasks of varying difficulty using a multi-level modeling approach. Across 570 total within-person assessments of continuous HR monitoring, 28 younger adults (M = 19.76, SD = 1.15) and 29 older adults (M = 71.19, SD = 6.63) were administered two working memory tasks (backward digit span and n-back). There were no age differences in reactivity during the backward digit span. However, similar to previous findings, on the more difficult n-back task, younger adults low in extraversion showed a trend toward higher HR reactivity than young adults high in extraversion. Interestingly, the older adults showed the opposite pattern in that lower extraversion older adults were less reactive than the higher extraversion older adults who showed the steepest increase in HR. The HR increase of the older adults high in extraversion may be an indication of higher engagement in this more difficult task. Individual differences in extraversion need to be taken into account when administering working memory tasks in older adults.

SUBMITTER: Pearman A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7822317 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Age and extraversion differences in heart rate reactivity during working memory tasks.

Pearman Ann A Neupert Shevaun D SD Ennis Gilda E GE

PloS one 20210122 1

Research and theory have shown a link between heart rate reactivity during cognitive testing and extraversion in younger adults; however, similar work has not been conducted with older adults. This study was designed to explore age and extraversion-related differences in within-person heart rate (HR) reactivity during two working memory tasks of varying difficulty using a multi-level modeling approach. Across 570 total within-person assessments of continuous HR monitoring, 28 younger adults (M = ...[more]

PMID: 33481892

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Project description:Recent neuroimaging studies have reported an age-related reduction in brain activations in response to working memory load in task-sensitive brain regions. The current fMRI study investigated the age-related differences in brain activations of the updating mechanism in working memory, which was not investigated in previous studies. With a hybrid block/event-related design, this study was able to examine changes in BOLD signals (i.e., neuromodulation) to increase in updating, a type of cognitive control that is understudied. Older adults were separated into young-old and old-old cohorts to examine whether, within healthy aging, the neuromodulation to cognitive control decreases with age. Our results show that younger adults activate left precentral gyrus and right cerebellum more during trials that require updating than trials that do not require updating. Although older adults showed reduced neuromodulation in these two regions, the old-old cohort failed to show any significant neuromodulation in response to updating. Moreover, older adults not only showed reduced suppressions of the default mode network (DMN) regions during the task, they also overactivated some of the DMN regions, esp. the old-old, when compared to the younger adults. Older adults also showed overactivations in a region (right precentral gyrus) that is contralateral to a task-sensitive region that was activated in the younger adults during updating. Brain-behavior correlations suggest that age-related overactivations of these DMN regions and the right precentral gyrus are maladaptive to their performance. Our results suggest that not only the neuromodulation in response to updating demands is diminished in healthy aging, older adults also show maladaptive increases in activations of task-irrelevant regions and reduced hemispheric specificity during updating. These effects are most pronounced in old-old cohort, compared to young-old, suggesting that age-related declines in neuromodulation during cognitive control is more pronounced in older cohorts within healthy aging.

Dataset Information

Age and extraversion differences in heart rate reactivity during working memory tasks.

Publications

Age and extraversion differences in heart rate reactivity during working memory tasks.

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