20 MAR 2018 by ideonexus
Adult Physical Activity Keeps Immune System Young
It is widely accepted that aging is accompanied by remodelling of the immune system including thymic atrophy and increased frequency of senescent T cells, leading to immune compromise. However, physical activity, which influences immunity but declines dramatically with age, is not considered in this literature. We assessed immune profiles in 125 adults (55–79 years) who had maintained a high level of physical activity (cycling) for much of their adult lives, 75 age-matched older adults and 55...
1 06 JAN 2018 by ideonexus
Health Concerns Spark Adult Interest in Science
Beginning in middle age and continuing through later adulthood, individuals are often motivated by events in their own lives or the lives of significant others to obtain health-related information.^^ Health-related concerns draw many adults into a new domain of science learning. At the same time, with retirement, older adults have more time to devote to personal interests. Their science learnmg addresses long-standing scientific interests as well as new areas of interest.^^
Adults differ fr... 1 
notes
notesAs do novelty, wonder, self interest, and relevance to personal.
09 SEP 2016 by ideonexus
A Lack of Uncertainty Impacts Learning in Adults
Healthy aging can lead to impairments in learning that affect many laboratory and real-life tasks. These tasks often involve the acquisition of dynamic contingencies, which requires adjusting the rate of learning to environmental statistics. For example, learning rate should increase when expectations are uncertain (uncertainty), outcomes are surprising (surprise) or contingencies are more likely to change (hazard rate). In this study, we combine computational modelling with an age-comparativ...08 JUL 2016 by ideonexus
Age-Related Decline in Strength as Decline Neurons
“What we have here is (a) failure to communicate,” said the Captain in the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke. This line rings true today as it relates to the failure of physiologists to communicate the mechanisms of muscle strength to the geriatrics community, where the lack of muscle strength observed in older adults holds high clinical significance. Similarly, there is a relative under recognition in the scientific community for the potential role of the brain’s failure to communicate with skeletal ... 1 notes
notesAs the neurons controlling muscle fibers die off, those muscles grow weaker. Possibly exercising muscles might keep signals going to those neurons and keep them alive, staving off age-related cognitive decline.
24 MAY 2016 by ideonexus
Busyness Correlated with Improved Cognitive Performance
Sustained engagement in mentally challenging activities has been shown to improve memory in older adults. We hypothesized that a busy schedule would be a proxy for an engaged lifestyle and would facilitate cognition. Here, we examined the relationship between busyness and cognition in adults aged 50–89. Participants (N = 330) from the Dallas Lifespan Brain Study (DLBS) completed a cognitive battery and the Martin and Park Environmental Demands Questionnaire (MPED), an assessment of busyness. ...31 JUL 2014 by ideonexus
Memory Systems as a Shared Resource
This inspired them to depart from testing memory for lists of words and events, and to explore the amount of rich, in-depth information remembered by couples about experienced events. They found these social exchanges led to clear collaborative memory benefits, which could take three forms:
“New information” such as finally snatching an elusive name of a musical thanks to a chain of prompts between the two parties.
Richer, more vivid descriptions of events including sensory information.
Info...
1 02 FEB 2014 by ideonexus
Alternative Reason for Age-Related Cognitive Decline
As adults age, their performance on many psychometric tests changes systematically, a finding that is widely taken to reveal that cognitive information-processing capacities decline across adulthood. Contrary to this, we suggest that older adults'; changing performance reflects memory search demands, which escalate as experience grows. A series of simulations show how the performance patterns observed across adulthood emerge naturally in learning models as they acquire knowledge. The simulati...Folksonomies: information entropy cognition
Folksonomies: information entropy cognition
The idea that as we grow older, our brains have more information to sort through, which makes it take longer to find the data we need.
08 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
A Flu Pandemic Reduces Quality of Life for Babies
Initially, Almond doubted that the intrauterine conditions provided by a pregnant woman, even one sick with a virulent strain of the flu, could exert any lasting influence on her offspring. “When I started looking at the influenza pandemic, I was skeptical of the fetal origins hypothesis. I didn’t think I’d find any long-term effects,” Almond says. “But the evidence was the opposite of what I expected.” Through an analysis of census data, Almond discovered that those individuals gestated duri...Folksonomies: pregnancy fetal development
Folksonomies: pregnancy fetal development
Children born during the flu pandemic grew up to have a poorer socioeconomic status than those born at other times.
