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As the proportion of older adults continues to grow rapidly here in the U.S. and across the globe, aging adults may be required to make increasingly more independent health-related and financial decisions. Thus, it is increasingly imperative to better understand the impact of age-related psychological changes on decision making. Although a growing body of research has linked age-related deficits in attention, memory, and cognitive control to changes in medial temporal and lateral prefrontal cortical function, remarkably little research has investigated the influence of aging on valuation and associated mesolimbic function in the striatum and medial prefrontal cortex. Likewise, theoretical accounts link age-related declines in a number of basic cognitive abilities to dopamine function, but research has largely neglected age differences in value-based learning and decision making which also rely on the dopamine system. Recent findings reveal age-related declines in the structure of striatal and medial frontal circuits, however it was not previously clear whether these structural declines contribute to functional deficits in incentive processing. Thus, the seven experiments presented here explored potential age differences across a range of value-based tasks from basic anticipatory and consummatory responses to reward cues (Experiments 1--2) to probabilistic value-based learning (Experiments 2--5) to investment decision making (Experiments 6--7). The studies focus on both age-related and non-age-related individual differences in learning and decision making across the adult life span. Overall, three sets of key findings emerge. The first set of experiments on anticipatory affect reveal evidence for an age-related asymmetry in the anticipation of monetary gains and losses, such that older adults appear less sensitive to the prospect of financial loss than younger adults. In a subset of adults, this anticipatory affective bias contributes to loss avoidance learning impairments through the sensitivity of the anterior insula. Thus, although a relative lack of anxiety about potential loss may contribute to increased well-being, this asymmetry may put individuals with blunted loss anticipation at risk for certain types of financial mistakes. In fact, we show that individuals who perform poorly on the laboratory-based loss avoidance learning task accrue more financial debt in the real world. The second set of experiments focus on age differences in value-based learning and reveal that although older adults show intact neural representation of the actual value of reward outcomes, there is an age-related decline in the neural representation of prediction error at outcome in the striatum and medial prefrontal cortex. Age differences in learning are magnified when choice set size is increased, but when the number of trials is extended older adults reach the same performance criterion as younger adults. The third set of experiments focus on age differences in risky financial decision making and reveal that older adults make more suboptimal choices than younger adults when choosing risky assets. Neuroimaging analyses reveal that the representation of expected value in the nucleus accumbens and medial prefrontal cortex is correlated with optimal investment decisions, and that the age-related increase in risky investment mistakes is mediated by a novel neural measure of variability in nucleus accumbens activity. The presentation of value information through visual decision aids improves investment choices in both younger and older adults. These findings are consistent with the notion that mesolimbic circuits play a critical role in optimal choice, and imply that providing simplified information about expected value may improve financial risk taking across the adult life span. Across the experiments, the findings suggest that both age-related affective biases and probabilistic learning impairments can influence decision making both in the laboratory and in the real world through insular and mesolimbic brain regions. Importantly, age-related impairments are reduced under supportive task conditions (designed to target the brain systems identified using neuroimaging). Together, the set of experiments presented here suggests that understanding how the brain processes value information may eventually inform the design of more targeted and effective behavioral interventions for investors of all ages.
Despite the graying of the world population and increasing relevance of decision competence across the life span, scant research has focused on whether or how reward processing and risky decision making may change across adulthood. Here, we review studies that have examined how age influences psychological and neural responses to financial incentives and risk. The findings suggest that while processing of basic rewards may be maintained across the adult life span, learning about new rewards may decline as a function of age. Further, these behavioral changes can be linked to relative preservation of striatal function in the face of age-related declines in the connectivity of the prefrontal cortex to the striatum. This frontostriatal disconnection may impair risky decision making, both in the laboratory and the real world. In addition to informing theory about how affect and cognition combine to guide choice, these novel findings imply that a deeper understanding of how the aging brain processes incentives may eventually inform the design of more targeted and effective decision aids for individuals of all ages.
Although global declines in structure have been documented in the aging human brain, little is known about the functional integrity of the striatum and prefrontal cortex in older adults during incentive processing. We used event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging to determine whether younger and older adults differed in both self-reported and neural responsiveness to anticipated monetary gains and losses. The present study provides evidence for intact striatal and insular activation during gain anticipation with age, but shows a relative reduction in activation during loss anticipation. These findings suggest that there is an asymmetry in the processing of gains and losses in older adults that may have implications for decision making.
How come I can never find my keys? Why don't I sleep as well as I used to? Why do my friends keep repeating the same stories? What can I do to keep my brain sharp? Scientists know. Brain Rules for Aging Well, by developmental molecular biologist Dr. John Medina, gives you the facts, and the prescription to age well, in his signature engaging style. With so many discoveries over the years, science is literally changing our minds about the optimal care and feeding of the brain. All of it is captivating. A great deal of it is unexpected. In his New York Times best seller Brain Rules, Medina showed us how our brains really work, and why we ought to redesign our workplaces and schools to match. In Brain Rules for Baby, he gave parents the brain science they need to know to raise happy, smart, moral kids. Now, in Brain Rules for Aging Well, Medina shares how you can make the most of the years you have left. In a book destined to be a classic on aging, Medina's fascinating stories and infectious sense of humor breathe life into the science. Brain Rules for Aging Well is organized into four sections, each laying out familiar problems with surprising solutions. First up, the social brain, in which topics ranging from relationships to happiness and gullibility illustrate how our emotions change with age. The second section focuses on the thinking brain, explaining how working memory and executive function change with time. The third section is all about your body: how certain kinds of exercise, diets, and sleep can slow the decline of aging. Each section is sprinkled with practical advice, for example, the fascinating benefits of dancing, and the brain science behind each intervention. The final section is about the future. Your future. Medina connects all the chapters into a plan for maintaining your brain health. You may already be experiencing the sometimes-unpleasant effects of the aging process. Or you may be deeply concerned about your loved ones who are. Either way, Brain Rules for Aging Well is for you.
Old adults undertake multiple reduced cognitive abilities in aging, which are accompanied with specific brain reorganization in forms of regional brain activity and brain tissues, inter-region connectivity, and topology of whole brain networks in both function and structure. The plasticity changes of brain activities in old adults are explained by the mechanisms of compensation and dedifferentiation. For example, older adults have been observed to have greater, usually bilateral, prefrontal activities during memory tasks compared to the typical unilateral prefrontal activities in younger adults, which was explained as a compensation for the reduced brain activities in visual processing cortices. Dedifferentiation is another mechanism to explain that old adults are with much less selective and less distinct activity in task-relevant brain regions compared with younger adults. A larger number of studies have examined the plasticity changes of brain from the perspective of regional brain activities. However, studies on only regional brain activities cannot fully elucidate the neural mechanisms of reduced cognitive abilities in aging, as multiple regions are integrated together to achieve advanced cognitive function in human brain. In recent years, brain connectivity/network, which targets how brain regions are integrated, have drawn increasing attention in neuroscience with the development of neuroimaging techniques and graph theoretical analysis. Connectivity quantifies functional association or neural fibers between two regions that may be spatially far separated, and graph theoretical analysis of brain network examines the complex interactions among multiple regions from the perspective of topology. Studies showed that compared to younger adults, older adults had altered strength of task-relevant functional connectivity between specific brain regions in cognitive tasks, and the alternation of connectivity are correlated to behavior performance. For example, older adults had weaker functional connectivity between the premotor cortex and a region in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in a working memory task. Interventions like cognitive training and neuro-modulation (e.g., transcranial magnetic stimulation) have been shown to be promising in regaining or retaining the decreasing cognitive abilities in aging. However, only few neuroimaging studies have examined the influence of interventions to old adult’s brain activity, connectivity, and cognitive performance. This Research Topic calls for contributions on brain network of subjects in normal aging or with age-related diseases like mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease. The studies are expected to be based on neuroimaging techniques including but not limited to functional magnetic resonance imaging, Electroencephalography, and diffusion tensor imaging, and contributions on the influence of interventions to brain networks in aging are highly encouraged. All these studies would enrich our understanding of neural mechanisms underlying aging, and offer new insights for developing possible interventions to retain cognitive abilities in aging subjects.
Decisions large and small play a fundamental role in shaping life course trajectories of health and well-being: decisions draw upon an individual's capacity for self-regulation and self-control, their ability to keep long-term goals in mind, and their willingness to place appropriate value on their future well-being. Aging and Decision Making addresses the specific cognitive and affective processes that account for age-related changes in decision making, targeting interventions to compensate for vulnerabilities and leverage strengths in the aging individual. This book focuses on four dominant approaches that characterize the current state of decision-making science and aging - neuroscience, behavioral mechanisms, competence models, and applied perspectives. Underscoring that choice is a ubiquitous component of everyday functioning, Aging and Decision Making examines the implications of how we invest our limited social, temporal, psychological, financial, and physical resources, and lays essential groundwork for the design of decision supportive interventions for adaptive aging that take into account individual capacities and context variables. - Divided into four dominant approaches that characterize the current state of decision-making science and aging neuroscience - Explores the impact of aging on the linkages between cortical structures/functions and the behavioral indices of decision-making - Examines the themes associated with behavioral approaches that attempt integrations of methods, models, and theories of general decision-making with those derived from the study of aging - Details the changes in underlying competencies in later life and the two prevailing themes that have emerged—one, the general individual differences perspective, and two, a more clinical focus
Decades of research have demonstrated that normal aging is accompanied by cognitive change. Much of this change has been conceptualized as a decline in function. However, age-related changes are not universal, and decrements in older adult performance may be moderated by experience, genetics, and environmental factors. Cognitive aging research to date has also largely emphasized biological changes in the brain, with less evaluation of the range of external contributors to behavioral manifestations of age-related decrements in performance. This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of cutting-edge cognitive aging research through the lens of a life course perspective that takes into account both behavioral and neural changes. Focusing on the fundamental principles that characterize a life course approach - genetics, early life experiences, motivation, emotion, social contexts, and lifestyle interventions - this handbook is an essential resource for researchers in cognition, aging, and gerontology.
Written by leading researchers in educational and social psychology, learning science, and neuroscience, this edited volume is suitable for a wide-academic readership. It gives definitions of key terms related to motivation and learning alongside developed explanations of significant findings in the field. It also presents cohesive descriptions concerning how motivation relates to learning, and produces a novel and insightful combination of issues and findings from studies of motivation and/or learning across the authors' collective range of scientific fields. The authors provide a variety of perspectives on motivational constructs and their measurement, which can be used by multiple and distinct scientific communities, both basic and applied.
Individuals do not always perform to their full capability on cognitive tasks. When this occurs, the usual explanation is that the individual was not properly motivated. But this begs the important question: How and why does motivation interact with and influence cognitive processing and the control processes that regulate it? What are the underlying mechanisms that govern such interactions? Motivation has been an important component of psychology and neuroscience throughout the history of the field, but has recently been rejuvenated by rapidly accelerating research interest in the nature of motivation-cognition interactions, particularly as they impact control processes and goal-directed behavior. This volume provides an up-to-date snapshot of the state of research in this exciting, expanding area. The contributors to the volume are internationally-renowned researchers that lead the field in conducting groundbreaking studies. Moreover, they represent a variety of research perspectives and traditions: cognitive psychology and neuroscience, animal learning, social, affective, and personality psychology, and development, lifespan, and aging studies. This book summarizes our current state of understanding of the relationship between motivation and cognitive control, and serves as an essential reference for both students and researchers.
Possible new breakthroughs in understanding the aging mind that can be used to benefit older people are now emerging from research. This volume identifies the key scientific advances and the opportunities they bring. For example, science has learned that among older adults who do not suffer from Alzheimer's disease or other dementias, cognitive decline may depend less on loss of brain cells than on changes in the health of neurons and neural networks. Research on the processes that maintain neural health shows promise of revealing new ways to promote cognitive functioning in older people. Research is also showing how cognitive functioning depends on the conjunction of biology and culture. The ways older people adapt to changes in their nervous systems, and perhaps the changes themselves, are shaped by past life experiences, present living situations, changing motives, cultural expectations, and emerging technology, as well as by their physical health status and sensory-motor capabilities. Improved understanding of how physical and contextual factors interact can help explain why some cognitive functions are impaired in aging while others are spared and why cognitive capability is impaired in some older adults and spared in others. On the basis of these exciting findings, the report makes specific recommends that the U.S. government support three major new initiatives as the next steps for research.