News reports of research into memory June 2004
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June 2004
'Imagination' helps older people remember to comply with medical advice
A new study suggests a way to help older people remember to take
medications and follow other medical advice. Researchers found older
adults (aged 60 to 81) who spent a few minutes picturing how they
would test their blood sugar were 50% more likely to actually do
these tests on a regular basis than those who used other memory
techniques. Participants were assigned to one of three groups. One
group spent one 3-minute session visualizing exactly what they would
be doing and where they would be the next day when they were
scheduled to test their blood sugar levels. Another group repeatedly
recited aloud the instructions for testing their blood. The last
group were asked to write a list of pros and cons for testing blood
sugar. All participants were asked not to use timers, alarms or
other devices. Over 3 weeks, the “imagination” group remembered 76%
of the time to test their blood sugar at the right times of the day
compared to an average of 46% in the other two groups. They were
also far less likely to go an entire day without testing than those
in the other two groups.
The study appeared in the June issue of
Psychology and Aging.
Full reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-06/nioa-ho060104.php
Stress reactions no guarantee of authenticity
Physical stress reactions have often been taken as evidence for
the authenticity of a memory. A recent study investigated people
with “memories” of alien abductions (on the grounds that these are
the memories least likely to be true) and found that those who
believed they had been abducted by aliens responded physically to
recall of that memory in the same way as to recall of other, true,
stressful events. The finding suggests that a person’s reaction to a
memory is no evidence for whether or not it truly happened.
The study was published in the July issue of
Psychological Science.
Full reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-06/aps-ptw062104.php
Stress no aid to memory
Numerous studies have questioned the accuracy of recall of
traumatic events, but the research is often dismissed as artificial
and not intense enough to simulate real-life trauma. A new study has
used real stress: 509 active duty military personnel enrolled in
survival school training were deprived of food and sleep 48 hours
and then interrogated. A day later, only 30% of those presented with
a line-up could identify the right person, only 34% identified their
interrogator from a photo-spread and 49% from single photos shown
sequentially (putting the interrogator in the same clothing boosted
correct identification to 66%). Thirty people even got the gender
wrong. Those subjected to physical threats (half the participants)
performed worse.
The report appeared in the May/June issue of the
International Journal of Law and Psychiatry.
Full reference
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99995089
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-06/yu-emp060304.php
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-06/ns-mfy060904.php
Being fluent in two languages may help keep the brain sharper for longer
A study of 104 people aged between 30 and 88 has found that those
who were fluent in two languages rather than just one were sharper
mentally. Those fluent in two languages responded faster on tasks
assumed to place demands on working memory, compared to those who
were fluent in just English, at all age groups. This is consistent
with the theory that constant management of 2 competing languages
enhances executive functions. Bilingual volunteers were also much
less likely to suffer from the mental decline associated with old
age. The finding is consistent with other research suggesting that
mental activity helps in protecting older adults from mental
decline. The participants were all middle class, and educated to
degree level. Half of the volunteers came from Canada and spoke only
English. The other half came from India and were fluent in both
English and Tamil.
The report appeared in the June issue of
Psychology and Aging.
Full reference
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3794479.stm
Learning a second language may not be as laborious as believed
A study of adult learners of a second language has revealed that
their brains still possess a surprising facility for learning words
— much greater than the learner is consciously aware of. College
students learning first-year French demonstrated brain activity that
was clearly discriminating between real and pseudo-French words
after only 14 hours of classroom instruction, although the students
performed only at chance levels when asked to consciously choose
whether or not the stimuli were real French words. The greater the
exposure to French, the larger the difference in brain response to
words and pseudo words.
The report was published June 13 in the on-line edition of
Nature Neuroscience.
Full reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-06/uow-baw061104.php
Some brains age more rapidly than others
Investigation of the patterns of gene expression in post-mortem
brain tissue has revealed two groups of genes with significantly
altered expression levels in the brains of older individuals. The
most significantly affected were mostly those related to learning
and memory. One of the most interesting, and potentially useful,
findings, is that patterns of gene expression were quite similar in
the brains of younger adults. Very old adults also showed similar
patterns, although the similarity was less. But the greatest degree
of individual variation occurred in those aged between 40 and 70.
Some of these adults showed gene patterns that looked more like the
young group, whereas others showed gene patterns that looked more
like the old group. It appears that gene changes start around 40 in
some people, but not in others. It also appears that those genes
that are affected by age are unusually vulnerable to damage from
agents such as free radicals and toxins in the environment,
suggesting that lifestyle in young adults may play a part in
deciding rate and degree of cognitive decline in later years.
The study appeared in the June 24 issue of
Nature.
Full reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-06/chb-dgi060204.php
Estrogen-alone hormone therapy could increase risk of dementia in older women
A new report from the Women's Health Initiative Memory Study
suggests that older women using estrogen-alone hormone therapy could
be at a slightly greater risk of developing dementia, including
Alzheimer's disease (AD), than women who do not use any menopausal
hormone therapy. Among 10,000 women using conjugated equine
estrogens, 37 could be expected to develop dementia, compared to 25
in 10,000 women using the placebo. Previous reports from the Study
found a greater risk with hormone therapy involving both estrogen
plus progestin: among 10,000 women over age 65 using estrogen plus
progestin there might be 45 cases of dementia compared to 22 cases
in 10,000 older women on placebo.
It was also reported that beginning estrogen-alone hormone therapy
after age 65 can have a small negative effect on overall cognitive
abilities and that this negative effect may be greater in women with
existing cognitive problems.
These findings appeared in the June 23/30 issue of the
Journal of the American Medical Association.
Full reference
2
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-06/nioa-eht062204.php
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-06/wfub-etd061704.php
Estrogen boosts memory in men with prostate cancer
A new study suggests that high doses of estrogen may improve
long-term memory and decrease feelings of confusion in men whose
testosterone levels have been lowered to treat advanced prostate
cancer. The findings suggest that hormone deprivation, prostate
cancer or a combination of the two significantly impair verbal
memory, while estrogen therapy significantly improves verbal memory
performance. Hormone deprivation appears to slow working memory
performance, but did not affect accuracy. Supplementation with
estrogen did not affect working memory.
The paper was presented on June 6 at the American Society for
Clinical Oncology annual meeting in New Orleans, La.
Reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-06/ohs-ebm060604.php
Cognitive dysfunction found in women with breast cancer prior to treatment
The first study to evaluate cognitive skills prior to
chemotherapy has found significant deficits in neuropsychological
function in breast cancer patients before undergoing chemotherapy,
and suggests the incidence of "chemobrain," a widely reported side
effect in women undergoing treatment for breast cancer, may be
overestimated. The study found 35% of the women demonstrated
baseline cognitive impairment with significant deficits in verbal
learning and memory prior to chemotherapy. Psychomotor processing
speed and attention, non-verbal memory, naming, complex visual tasks
and hand fine motor dexterity also trended toward significant
impairment compared to the controls.
The study was published in the June 21 issue of
CANCER.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-06/jws-scw061604.php
Full reference
The full study is available via Wiley InterScience (http://www.interscience.wiley.com/cancer-newsroom).
Brain development and puberty may be key factors in learning disorders
New research suggests that the brains of children with learning
problems not only appear to develop more slowly than those of their
unaffected counterparts but also actually may stop developing around
the time of puberty's onset. In the study, children with impairments
started out about three years behind, but their rate of improvement
was very similar to that of the children without impairments — until
around 10 years, when further development in the children with
learning problems stopped. The researchers suggest that delayed
brain development and its interaction with puberty may be key
factors contributing to language-based learning disabilities such as
dyslexia. This hypothesis suggests a completely new approach to the
study of learning problems. It also points to the importance of
early intervention.
The article appeared in the June 29 issue of the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Full reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-06/nu-bda061604.php
We weren't made to multitask
A new imaging study supports the view that we can’t perform two
tasks at once, rather, the tasks must wait their turn — queuing up
for their turn at processing.
The study was published in the June issue of
Psychological Science.
Full reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-06/aps-wwm060704.php
Alzheimer's may leave some forms of memory intact
A new study has demonstrated that people with Alzheimer's disease
retain the capability for a specific form of memory used for rote
learning of skills, despite their other memory loss. The finding
suggests new strategies to improve training and rehabilitative
programs for Alzheimer's sufferers. It also confirms other studies
suggesting that a number of brain systems are more intact in
Alzheimer's than previously thought.
The report was published in the June 10 issue of
Neuron.
Full reference
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-06/hhmi-als060404.php
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-06/cp-ssh060304.php
More support for social skill theory of brain evolution
Why do we have such large brains? Brains are very costly — they
require a lot of energy. Gaining credence in recent years has been
the idea that the advantage of our brain has been through the
complex social skills it allows. Evidence supporting this has come
from a study of records of primates deceiving each other for
personal gain. The bigger the
neocortex, it seems, the more likely a primate is to practice
deception. The researchers gathered instances of deception across 18
species of primate and found no link with overall brain size, but a
clear match between devious deeds and neocortex volume.
The study will be reported in the Proceedings
of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences.
Reference
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/dispatch/story/0,12978,1250723,00.html
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996090
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