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With Age, Distractions Hinder Memory

Posted on: Thursday, 27 November 2008, 09:00 CST

New research supports the theory that distractions hinder memory as people age. 

In the study, which used brain scans of participants in a noisy lab machine, researchers found that older people have more difficulty remembering some things because they are more easily distracted as they try to learn.

Although the research involved the recognition of faces, scientists say the findings apply to more general tasks of trying to remember something a person sees or hears, according to lead author Dale Stevens, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University.

He advises older people who need to learn something to do all they can to remove distractions and focus on the task at hand.

Stevens and his team compared 10 healthy people in their 60s and 70s to 12 younger participants aged 22 to 36. The participants had their brains scanned as they viewed photographs of strangers. Each photograph was shown for one second, and the participants were asked if they'd seen it before in the study.

In total, they viewed 180 unique faces, of which 120 showed up a second time. The researchers found the older participants failed to recognize a face they'd already seen 43 percent of the time, while this happened only 26 percent of the time in the younger volunteers.

The researchers wondered why the faces did not get planted in memory, so they went back and analyzed what happened with the volunteers when they first saw a face they later failed to recognize.

Not surprisingly, in both the older and younger groups an area in the brain involved in memory, known as the hippocampus, was less active when a face failed to stick in the memory than when it did. However, the older group also showed elevated activity in other brain areas, whereas the younger participants did not.

Stevens said those areas included the auditory cortex, which is involved in analyzing sound, and several areas that play a role in directing attention.

Stevens sought an explanation for this difference. 

To begin with, the brain-scanning machine was noisy. It made buzzing, knocking and banging sounds like a jackhammer, he said.  

Even with the earplugs, "it's a little distracting," he said.

Stevens concluded that the brain activity in the older group indicated that the noise was more distracting to them than to the younger participants.

While the study did not address when a person's brain begins to behave this way, Cheryl Grady of the Rotman Institute, who was involved in the study, suspects it may begin between the ages of 40 and 60.

Dr. Barry Gordon, a neurology professor and memory expert at The Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions who was not involved in the study, said the research was "an appreciable advance."

A next step might be determining whether older people will do better on a memory test if they're warned ahead of time about potential distractions, he said.

"If you want to remember something, it's more important if you're older than younger not to be listening to your iPod," he told Reuters.

Stevens and his team conducted the research while at the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest, which is affiliated with the University of Toronto.  

The study was published in the latest issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

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On the Net:

Journal of Neuroscience
http://www.jneurosci.org/

Harvard University
http://www.harvard.edu/

Rotman Institute

Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports

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