Neurocognitive Analysis of Ageing and Human Memory

Improving healthy ageing across the lifecourse is one of the principal challenges facing society, and is a key strategic priority for BBSRC. Among the most common worries many older adults have is that forgetfulness, which may feel increasingly pervasive as the years go by, will eventually mean losing their precious collection of memories from the past and their ability to remember new experiences in the future. The ageing process is typically characterised by neural degeneration in a number of brain regions, most notably the frontal lobes. These areas are associated with "higher" cognitive abilities such as attention, planning, problem solving and processes that control how information is stored and retrieved from memory. However, the ageing brain may be more resilient than previously thought, with evidence that activity decreases in the frontal lobe may be accompanied by increased activation in other cortical regions. These changes may reflect compensation, with preserved areas taking over the function of declining regions, or might perhaps indicate shifts in the way older people perform some cognitive tasks. By capitalising on the cognitive abilities that are comparatively resistant to the ageing process, it may be possible for older adults to develop effective strategies that will allow them to make the most of their memories as they age.

This PhD project will investigate the ability of older adults to recollect the context in which events were experienced, and explore potential strategies that might enhance retention, leading to reduced age-related decline. These strategies might include the use of deep, elaborative encoding tasks that can promote the formation of rich, vivid memory traces. For example, participants could be trained to process studied material in a meaning-based, associative manner, or to focus on self-referential or emotional value-based details. Neuroimaging data could be used to explore the brain networks that might support age-resistant elaborative memory processes, investigating the hypothesis that frontal lobe regions which have been linked to elaborative processing may be, in relative terms at least, less disrupted by the ageing process than other areas. If successful, the results of this project could be applied to develop memory-related cognitive training techniques that could produce potentially long-lasting enhancement of remembering in older adults.

The student will have the opportunity to gain experience in a wide range of interdisciplinary cognitive neuroscience methods used in the Memory Laboratory (http://www.memlab.psychol.cam.ac.uk), including behavioural studies, functional neuroimaging (fMRI), electrophysiology (EEG/MEG), and brain stimulation (TMS/tDCS). Students will be provided with an extensive training in research methods and techniques, and will be a member of the Cambridge Graduate Programme in Cognitive and Brain Sciences which includes regular theoretical seminars and courses.