Grant: Project Grant

As we grow older we continue to gain a wealth of knowledge and experience across many life domains. This vast store of knowledge and lived experience can be accessed to support decision making, problem solving, and reasoning, all essential functions for performing activities of everyday life. At the same time, some cognitive abilities which allow us to function in novel or changing situations decline with age. This suggests that if our knowledge and experience is not a 'good fit' with the problem we're confronting or the decision we're making, then bringing this information to the table might not help, and could even harm our ability to make decisions or solve problems. Unfortunately, our understanding of how to effectively harness this repertoire of knowledge and experience to aid cognitive functioning in later life remains limited. Interestingly, changes in the brain that occur with aging seem to reflect this pattern of age-related cognitive changes. Communication between brain regions involved in accessing our stored knowledge, and those involved in applying it in novel situations, increases with age. This suggests that older adults may rely on increased communication flow between these brain regions to gain access and use past knowledge to support cognitive functioning. In the proposed research we investigate this possibility using brain imaging and cognitive testing. We are interested in discovering whether age-related changes in communication patterns between these brain regions are associated with cognitive abilities in later life. Our goal is to understand what factors may help older adults to take advantage of these brain changes, and to maximally leverage their knowledge and life experience to support functioning in everyday life.