Why do some older adults show decline in their spatial memory?
The findings from a UArizona-led study may be helpful in predicting memory decline in the early stages of dementia.
University of Arizona Communications: Rajalakshmi Article 12/6/2023.
Aging becomes apparent in various ways, one of them being changes in memory function. But some older adults experience a faster decline in memory compared to others.
A new study by University of Arizona psychologists investigated the possible scenarios that could lead to waning memory in some older people. The researchers also studied both age-dependent and age-independent factors that could contribute to memory decline in younger and older people alike.
The study suggests that the hippocampus, a brain region associated with memory and navigation, could contribute to the difficulty in learning new environments and locations in some older adults. Neural representations in the hippocampus could explain why some people have a hard time remembering locations, said Li Zheng, a research scientist in the Department of Psychology and the lead author of the study.
"The study's findings will be helpful in predicting the level of memory decline in early stages of dementia," Zheng said.
Published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the new study is designed based on a similar study conducted in rats by Carol Barnes, a Regents Professor of psychology, neurology and neuroscience.
Barnes' study investigated specialized cells in the hippocampus called "place cells," or neurons that get triggered and fire when a person or animal enters a particular place. When an individual goes to another location, another place cell fires, helping the brain's hippocampus build a mental representation of each space.
When an animal or human enters a new environment, the place cells undergo a process called "remapping." The study observed that the older rats showed difficulties in remapping for different environments more so than younger rats, indicating an inferior spatial memory performance.
Building on Barnes' study, Zheng and her team recruited 25 younger adults and 22 older adults, all of them healthy. The participants were instructed to take part in a virtual reality experiment. On a computer screen, the younger and older adults memorized the layouts and locations of six shops in two virtual cities.
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