Negative Affect Influences Electrophysiological Markers of Visual Working Memory in Mildly Stressed Older Adults.

Tab R Memmott,Daniel Klee,Barry Oken

doi:10.3389/fnagi.2018.00148

Tab R Memmott, Daniel Klee + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fnagi.2018.00148

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Abstract

Negative affect (NA) has been related to lower working memory performance across all ages, including in older adults where it has been suggested as a marker for later cognitive impairments. However, NA-related decreases in working memory performance have not been shown in a full range of working memory paradigms or fully explored in the context of electrophysiological measures of working memory. We examined the impact of NA and related markers on an electroencephalography (EEG) marker of visual working memory (VWM) capacity, referred to as the contralateral delay activity (CDA). This study analyzed data collected from 48 cognitively intact, mildly stressed older adults (50–74 years old) who completed a VWM change-detection task to elicit the CDA, as well as self-rated measures of affect, stress, neuroticism and depression. Regression analyses revealed significant CDA amplitude effects with NA across task conditions. These results indicate a reduction in a physiological measure of VWM capacity in high-NA participants. These results are of interest as NA has been associated with a greater risk for worse cognitive function, detrimental health outcomes and reduced quality of life in older adults. This research adds to our understanding of how NA impacts older adults and gives a potential biomarker for successful intervention outcomes.

Highlights

Visual working memory (VWM), referred to as the visuospatial sketchpad (Baddeley, 2003), is a memory system that establishes the ability to attend to and work with visual information over a time span of seconds
Schwarzkopp et al (2016) explored these age-related differences alongside filtering efficiency (FE), the ability to filter out irrelevant stimuli whilst maintaining the relevant, and suggested that older adults rely on the earlier contralateral delay activity (CDA) interval to filter out irrelevant information; whereas, younger adults did so much earlier in time via sensory selection processes. These results indicate that there may be a fundamental dissociation between functional processes and overall performance in working memory as people age
This study examined an event related potential (ERP) component of visual working memory (VWM) in relation to Negative affect (NA) in a sample of older adults

Summary

Introduction

Visual working memory (VWM), referred to as the visuospatial sketchpad (Baddeley, 2003), is a memory system that establishes the ability to attend to and work with visual information over a time span of seconds. An ERP with promising results for working memory exploration, termed the contralateral delay activity (CDA), was found to be reflective of discrete item capacity (Vogel et al, 2005; Drew et al, 2006; Ikkai et al, 2010) during working memory item retention This ERP may be evoked, along with a measure of behavioral performance (K-score), using a computerized change detection task with varying levels of target and distractor items. The sensitivity of this component to the number of items in VWM makes it a useful marker for experiments pertaining to memory effects (see Luria et al, 2016 for a review of these recent CDA studies)

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