Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Aging is typically associated with declines in the precision, or accuracy, of memory. Older adults often have difficulty distinguishing a learned object from a similar one that has not been previously encountered, indicating a reduced precision in item memory. Older adults also have difficulties in remembering the locations of objects, suggesting a reduced precision in spatial memory. Previous studies have investigated aging-related declines in memory precision. However, most of these studies have focused on processes enacted when people use these memories, i.e., memory retrieval. How the brain achieves precision during memory formation has not been thoroughly studied. Therefore, I propose to work with Dr. Shayna Rosenbaum at York University and Dr. Jennifer Ryan at the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto to design a behavioral and fMRI study to tackle this question. Specifically, we will test 30 healthy younger adults (18 - 35 years old), 30 healthy older adults (65 - 80 years old), and 30 age-matched older adults with mild cognitive impairment (with specific declines in memory function). Participants will be asked to remember faces presented at different locations on a computer screen. The face items will vary in similarity to one another, and the spatial locations of the faces can either be close to or far from each other. When the faces are similar and closer to each other, higher precision in item and spatial memory is required during memory formation. After a short delay, participants will be asked to recall the faces and their locations as accurately as possible, also in the scanner. Using this experiment, we can investigate how encoding and retrieving memories of varying precision is supported by different brain systems, and how normal and pathological aging can affect these neural processes. We will use knowledge obtained from the current study to develop behavioral and neuroimaging markers for aging-related memory degeneration.