Cognitive Neuroscience of Aging: Linking cognitive and cerebral aging - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195156749 ISBN 13: 9780195156744

Publisher: OUP USA, 2004

Synopsis

Until very recently, what we knew about the neural basis of cognitive ageing was based on two disciplines that had very little contact with each other. Whereas the neuroscience of ageing investigated the effects of aging on the brain independently of age-related changes in cognition, the cognitive psychology of ageing investigated the effects of ageing on cognition independently of age related changes in the brain. Because an increasing number of studies have focused on the relationships between cognitive ageing and cerebral ageing, these two disciplines have begun to interact. This rapidly growing body of research has come to constitute a new discipline: cognitive neuroscience of ageing. The goal of this book is to introduce this new discipline at a level that is useful to both professionals and students in cognitive neuroscience, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, neuropsychology, neurology, and related areas. The book is divided into four main sections. The first section describes non-invasive measures of cerebral ageing, including structural (e.g. volumetric MRI), chemical, (e.g. dopamine PET), electrophysiological (e.g. ERP's), and hemodynamic measures (e.g. fMRI), and discusses how they can be linked to behavioural measures of cognitive ageing. The second section reviews evidence for the effects of ageing on neural activity during different cognitive functions, including perception and attention, use of imagery, working memory, long-term memory, and prospective memory. The third section focuses on clinical and applied concerns, such as the distinction between health ageing and ageing with Alzheimer's disease, and the use of cognitive training to ameliorate age-related cognitive decline. The final section describes theories that relate cognitive and cerebral ageing, including models accounting for functional neuroimaging evidence and models supported by computer simulations. Taken together, the chapters in this volume provide the first unified and comprehensive overview of the new discipline of cognitive neuroscience of ageing.

About this title

Review

By drawing together two distinct, but related, disciplines this book generates a number of questions which should inspire academics and research-hungry clinicians. Since the majority of us will grow old one day, and we will be a big majority, there will be huge implications for care, treatment, quality of life and lifestyle. Not before time, I would say to this introduction to cognitive and cerebral ageing. (The Psychologist)

About the Author

Roberto Cabeza is Professor in Psychological and Neuroscience at Duke University, where he is core faculty at the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Aging and Human Development. He has conducted pioneering studies on functional neuroimaging of aging, and he is the author of an influential model regarding the effects of aging on the lateralization of brain activations. In 2003, he received the Young Investigator Award of the Cognitive Neuroscience Society for his research on functional neuroimaging of memory and cognitive neuroscience of aging. Lars Nyberg received his Ph.D. in 1993 from Umeå University, then completed his postdoctoral research with Endel Tulving at Rotman Research Institute on PET studies of memory functions. He is currently Professor of Neuropsychology at Umeå University, where his research focuses on brain imaging studies of cognitive functions in younger and older individuals. Denise Park is Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she is Co-Director of the Center for Healthy Minds at the Beckman Institute. She is past chair of the Board of Scientific Affairs of the American Psychological Association and a member of the American Psychological Society's Board of Directors. She has published extensively on age-related changes in memory processes and has directed most of her recent work to the cognitive neuroscience of aging.

Edition details

• Publisher: OUP USA
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0195156749
• ISBN 13: 9780195156744
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 408
• Editor: Cabeza Roberto, Nyberg Lars, Park Denise