Abstract

Attention to novel events facilitates adaptation to a changing environment and may increase engagement with one?s surroundings and enhance cognitive abilities. Despite its importance, there has been limited study of age- and disease-related changes in how the brain processes novel events. Based on the PI?s research, a provisional model of a neurally-based novelty processing system is presented. Building upon this work, the proposed research will investigate age-related changes in the novelty P3 response and subsequent allocation of attention to novel stimuli (as measured by viewing durations) in order to elucidate the relationship between responsiveness to novelty and different patterns of cognitive aging.
The research aims to distinguish between changes in response to novelty that appear to be inevitable (observed with even the most successful cognitive aging), changes that are most commonly seen with usual cognitive aging, and changes that are associated with the most frequent degenerative disease of the brain (Alzheimer?s disease). A carefully designed series of experiments will test hypotheses about: 1) age-related changes in response to novelty among groups of cognitively high performing individuals; 2) differences in response to novelty between cognitively high and mid performing older individuals; 3) age-related changes in response to novelty among groups of individuals that differ in level of cognitive performance; 4) differences in response to novelty between cognitively normal individuals and cognitively impaired ones (with mild Alzheimer?s disease); and 5) the relationship between the novelty P3 response and subsequent attention to novel events in the laboratory and level of engagement in daily activities. These integrative functional and cognitive neuroscientific studies will extend previous work on the neurology of attention to novel events and provide new insights into the ways in which this fundamental aspect of human behavior is related to normal aging and disease.

  Funding Agency

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Aging (NIA)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
1R01AG017935-01A2
Application #
6470895
Study Section
Integrative, Functional and Cognitive Neuroscience 8 (IFCN)
Program Officer
Wagster, Molly V
Project Start
2002-04-01
Project End
2007-03-31
Budget Start
2002-04-01
Budget End
2003-03-31
Support Year
1
Fiscal Year
2002
Total Cost
$409,688
Indirect Cost

  Institution

Name
Brigham and Women's Hospital
Department
Type
DUNS #
071723621
City
Boston
State
MA
Country
United States
Zip Code
02115

  Publications

Porto, Fábio H G; Tusch, Erich S; Fox, Anne M et al. (2016) One of the most well-established age-related changes in neural activity disappears after controlling for visual acuity. Neuroimage 130:115-122
Tusch, Erich S; Alperin, Brittany R; Ryan, Eliza et al. (2016) Changes in Neural Activity Underlying Working Memory after Computerized Cognitive Training in Older Adults. Front Aging Neurosci 8:255
Simon, Sharon S; Tusch, Erich S; Holcomb, Phillip J et al. (2016) Increasing Working Memory Load Reduces Processing of Cross-Modal Task-Irrelevant Stimuli Even after Controlling for Task Difficulty and Executive Capacity. Front Hum Neurosci 10:380
Porto, Fábio Henrique de Gobbi; Fox, Anne Murphy; Tusch, Erich S et al. (2015) In vivo evidence for neuroplasticity in older adults. Brain Res Bull 114:56-61
Alperin, Brittany R; Tusch, Erich S; Mott, Katherine K et al. (2015) Investigating age-related changes in anterior and posterior neural activity throughout the information processing stream. Brain Cogn 99:118-27
Daffner, Kirk R; Alperin, Brittany R; Mott, Katherine K et al. (2015) Age-related differences in early novelty processing: using PCA to parse the overlapping anterior P2 and N2 components. Biol Psychol 105:83-94
Mott, Katherine K; Alperin, Brittany R; Fox, Anne M et al. (2015) The impact of executive capacity and age on mechanisms underlying multidimensional feature selection. Neuropsychologia 70:30-42
Daffner, Kirk R; Alperin, Brittany R; Mott, Katherine K et al. (2014) Age-related differences in the automatic processing of single letters: implications for selective attention. Neuroreport 25:77-82
Zhuravleva, Tatyana Y; Alperin, Brittany R; Haring, Anna E et al. (2014) Age-related decline in bottom-up processing and selective attention in the very old. J Clin Neurophysiol 31:261-71
Alperin, Brittany R; Mott, Katherine K; Rentz, Dorene M et al. (2014) Investigating the age-related ""anterior shift"" in the scalp distribution of the P3b component using principal component analysis. Psychophysiology 51:620-33

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