Memory tasks where age invariance has been demonstrated include picture recognition28

and implicit memory29-31 – both passive, nonstratcgic tasks. Also, there is some evidence that age differences are more pronounced for encoding new material, compared with retrieving information,32,33 due to the obligatory or automatic nature of retrieval.34 Finally, knowledge organization and semantic memory remain relatively unchanged with age.35,36 Figure 1 demonstrates that world knowledge, as measured by vocabulary, is not subjected to age-related declines, and may even show growth across the life span. As Figure 1 illustrates, it is only Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical tasks that require considerable mental effort or deliberate recollection that show age declines.37 Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical Repairing declining cognition The primary view of how to “repair” declining cognition among cognitive aging psychologists has been to provide older adults with memory supports that bypass the need to encode items actively or deliberately, thus lessening the executive processing requirements of the tasks.38 Specific examples in which environmental supports have effectively repaired the memory of older adults include (i) using

matching pictures to support memory for sentences, resulting in dramatically better memory in older adults (probably due to dual coding of the material, which provides Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical two routes to recall39); and (ii) providing older adults with memory cues that Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical are conceptually related to target words, resulting in click here larger memory improvements for the words in the old compared with the young.40 The conceptually related cues built upon existing world knowledge possessed by older adults, and

relied on activation of existing Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical information rather than only on engagement of executive processes (primarily working memory). Neural underpinnings of cognitive aging Recently, the fields of neurosciencc and cognitive aging have begun to merge, and we have already learned a number of things that were not previously considered in a systematic way in the cognitive aging literature. In the following sections, we discuss what is known about neural decline and reorganization, as it relates to aging. only Brain atrophy Structural imaging of brains indicate that, although the brain shrinks or shows volumetric changes with age, these changes are not equal across brain structures. There is more shrinkage with age in the frontal cortex, intermediate shrinkage in mediotemporal areas, and little decrease in volume in the occipital cortex.41 There are decreases in both gray matter and white matter, and evidence for demyclination.41,42 Increases in white matter hyperintensities occur with age.43 These are small decreases in white matter tissue irregularly distributed across regions.