Why Some Older Adults Remember Better Than Others

A study in eLife explored why some older adults have better memory recall than others, reports ScienceDaily . The team used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure activity from the whole brain at high resolution, delving not just into magnitude of activity but also into memory information contained in patterns of brain activity. One hundred participants between 60 and 82 years old had their brains scanned as they studied words paired with pictures of famous people and places. They were then prompted during a scanned memory test with words they had seen and asked to remember the associated image. The researchers learned that memory recall processes in the brains of older adults can bear a strong similarity to those previously seen in young adults, although evidence for these processes was significantly lessened in seniors who had more recall difficulties. However, more pronounced hippocampal activity and replay in the cortex was associated with better memory recall. "We're beginning to ask whether individual differences in the ability to mentally travel back in time can be explained by asymptomatic disease that impacts the brain and predicts future clinical diagnosis," said Stanford University Professor Anthony Wagner.