Accelerometer-based and self-reported physical activity and sedentary time and their relationships with the P300 in a Go/No-Go task in older adults.

Older adults who experience cognitive decline are more likely to have a reduced quality of life. Identifying lifestyle factors that may influence cognitive processing and in turn improve quality of life during older adulthood is an important area of interest. Cognitive function, as measured by the P300 event-related potential (ERP), has been noted to be modified by physical activity; however, no study to date has examined relationships between this neurophysiological measure and physical activity and sedentary time in older adults. Furthermore, there is a gap in understanding as to whether physical activity and sedentary time assessed using self-reported and accelerometer-based methods similarly relate to the P300. This study aimed to assess the P300 during a Go/No-Go task in relation to self-reported and accelerometer-based physical activity and sedentary time in a community sample of 75 older adults. Results indicated that participants engaging in more moderate-to-vigorous physical activity had larger P300 amplitudes across self-reported and accelerometer-based measurements; however, no relationships between sedentary time and P300 amplitude were observed. Notably, accelerometer-based moderate-to-vigorous physical activity explained P300 amplitudes over and above self-reported moderate-to-vigorous physical activity-an effect that remained significant even after accounting for age. Although these results highlight the importance of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity in relation to cognitive function, as measured via the P300 in older adults, a secondary analysis indicated that engaging in lifestyle activity may have similar effects on the P300 as moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. In sum, the present study highlights the role of habitual engagement in physical activity as a possible means for supporting cognitive function during the aging process.

A longitudinal examination of the protective effect of resilience against anxiety among older adults with high COVID-related worry.

This longitudinal study of community dwelling older adults (N = 453) examined consequences of COVID-related worries on changes in anxiety symptoms before relative to during the pandemic. We further evaluated if pre-COVID psychological resilience (PR) buffered the impact of COVID-related worry. Pre-COVID data were collected in September 2018. COVID-related worry and COVID anxiety symptoms were collected in October 2020 (Wave 2). Controlling for pre-COVID anxiety symptoms, we examined if COVID-related worries (e.g. I'm worried that I might die from COVID-19) were associated with increased anxiety symptoms, and whether pre-COVID PR moderated the association between COVID-related worries and prospective increases in anxiety symptoms. COVID-related worries were associated with increased anxiety symptoms (ß = 0.005, p < .01), whereas pre-COVID PR was associated with a decrease in anxiety symptoms (ß = -0.029, p < .05). PR moderated the association; COVID-related worries were associated with greater increases in anxiety symptoms among those with low pre-COVID PR (Model η2 = 0.35). Thus, the extent to which COVID-related worries influenced psychological health was dependent on pre-COVID levels of PR. We conclude the combined vulnerabilities of low pre-COVID PR and high COVID-related worries significantly increased the psychological consequences of COVID-19 for our sample of older adults.

Prediction of COVID-19-related distress: the role of anxiety and resiliency.

OBJECTIVES: Among older adults, anxiety is a likely risk factor for COVID-19-related distress, whereas psychological resilience may attenuate the negative impact of the pandemic. In this longitudinal study, we hypothesized that pre-pandemic anxiety would predict higher COVID-19-related distress, whereas resiliency would predict lower distress. Further we hypothesized that resilience would moderate the association between anxiety and distress. METHODS: Pre-pandemic data (July 2018) was obtained from a community sample of older adults and included measures of anxiety and resiliency. We conducted a follow-up survey (n = 571) during the pandemic (June 2020) and evaluated COVID-19-related distress. We used OLS regression to test our hypotheses. RESULTS: Anxiety symptoms predicted higher COVID-19-related distress; resiliency predicted lower distress. Resiliency did not moderate the association between anxiety and distress. High levels of resiliency, compared to low levels, attenuated the influence of anxiety on COVID-19-related distress, but only among those with low-to-moderate levels of anxiety. CONCLUSION: Older adults with anxiety may be more susceptible to COVID-19 related distress. Interventions that increase resilience, may mitigate distress, and promote healthy aging for those with low-to-moderate anxiety. Further research, however, is needed to help those older adults with high anxiety contend with such adverse experiences and build on psychological resources.

The P300, loneliness, and depression in older adults.

Depression is associated with high levels of cognitive impairment and increased loneliness among older adults. The current study examines associations between a reliable and robust neural marker of cognitive impairment (i.e., the P300 event-related brain potential [ERP]), loneliness, and depression and assesses the role of loneliness in the P300─depression relationship. In a community sample of 70 older adults between 61 and 75 years, we evaluated cross-sectional associations between depressive symptoms (Geriatric Depression Scale), loneliness (NIH Toolbox), and P300 amplitude measured from the electroencephalogram during a go/no-go task. Results indicated that reduced go and no-go P300 amplitudes were associated with increased depressive symptom severity, with the most unique variance accounted for by a reduced no-go P300 amplitude. Notably, loneliness significantly moderated the no-go P300-depressive symptom severity relationship, such that there was no relationship between the no-go P300 and depressive symptom severity among older adults reporting low levels of loneliness. This finding provides insight into the possibility that social support may offer protection against the depressogenic effects of poor inhibitory control in older adults. Taken together, this study provides a novel examination of the relationships between depression, loneliness, and the P300 ERP in older adults, with important implications for understanding the role of neural inhibition and loneliness in relation to depressive symptomatology.

Emotion regulation and the late positive potential (LPP) in older adults.

Emotion regulation (ER) processes in older adults may be important for successful aging. Neural correlates of ER processes have been examined using event-related brain potentials (ERPs), such as the late-positive potential (LPP) during cognitive reappraisal paradigms. The current study sought to extend this research by examining the LPP from an ER task in a sample of 47 community-dwelling older adults between the ages of 60 and 84 years, scoring either high on emotional well-being (as measured by habitual ER use and resiliency; high WB group, n = 20) or low on emotional well-being (as measured by habitual ER use, resiliency, and depression; low WB group, n = 27). Participants viewed unpleasant and neutral images and were instructed to simply react to the images or reappraise their emotional response. Both pre- and post-instruction LPP amplitudes were scored, in addition to self-reported ratings of negative emotion collected during the task. We found greater LPP amplitude to emotionally salient compared to neutral stimuli, reduced LPP amplitude following instructions to reappraise emotional response to stimuli across groups, and a blunted LPP overall for individuals with higher depressive symptoms. Additionally, we demonstrated that older adults with low emotional well-being were less successful at reappraisal according to self-reported ratings of negative emotion, although this was not reflected in the LPP. Collectively, these data suggest that laboratory-based ER tasks might be used to understand abnormal ER use-though the LPP may be more sensitive to depression than individual differences in ER ability.

Subjective, neuropsychological, and neural markers of memory in older adults.

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the relationship between the P300 event-related potential, neuropsychological measures of memory, subjective memory complaints (SMCs), and indicators of psychosocial functioning. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: In this cross-sectional study of 79 community-based older adults, aged 60-75 years, participants completed online surveys and in-person neuropsychological and electroencephalogram (EEG) assessments. MEASUREMENTS: Measures included: the Change subscale of the Metamemory in Adulthood Questionnaire, NIH Toolbox Emotions battery (Perceived Stress and Psychological Well-Being), Geriatric Depression Scale, Geriatric Anxiety Scale, electrocortical measures (EEG), California Verbal Learning Test, 3rd Edition, and diagnostic ratings for mild and major neurocognitive disorders based on full neuropsychological battery, clinical interview, and two-clinician consensus. RESULTS: P300 amplitude was associated with long-delay verbal memory recall and diagnostic rating. SMCs were not associated with objective memory or diagnostic rating. SMCs were associated with higher perceived stress, anxiety, and depression symptoms and lower psychological well-being. CONCLUSIONS: Neural indicators such as the P300 may be useful for early detection of cognitive impairment. SMCs were not a reliable indicator of early memory impairment in relation to neuropsychological or neural indicators, but may be a useful indicator of unreported stress and mood symptoms in clinical settings.

Impaired early visual categorization of fear in social anxiety.

Social anxiety is associated with biased social perception, especially of ambiguous cues. While aberrations in high-level processes (e.g., cognitive appraisal and interpretation) have been implicated in such biases, contributions of early, low-level stimulus processing remain unclear. Categorical perception represents an efficient process to resolve signal ambiguity, and categorical emotion perception can swiftly classify sensory input, "tagging" biologically important stimuli at early stages of processing to facilitate ecological response. However, early threat categorization could be disrupted by exaggerated (or disinhibited) threat processing in anxiety, resulting in biased perception of ambiguous signals. We tested this hypothesis among individuals with low and high trait social anxiety (LSA/HSA; defined relative to the current sample), who performed a two-alternative forced-choice (fear or neutral) task on facial expressions parametrically varied along a neutral-fear continuum. The groups diverged in the reaction time (RT) profile along the neutral-fear continuum, which was characteristic of categorical perception in the LSA (vs. HSA) group with drastically increased RT from neutral to intermediate (boundary) fear intensities, contrasting monotonic, nonsignificant RT changes in the HSA group. Neurometric analysis along the continuum identified an early neutral-fear categorization operation (arising in the P1, an early visual ERP at 100 ms), which was nonetheless impaired in the HSA group (due to disinhibited response at the neutral-fear boundary). Absent group differences in higher-level cognitive operations (identified by later ERPs), current findings highlight a dispositional cognitive vulnerability in early visual categorization of social threat, which could precipitate further cognitive aberrations and, eventually, the onset of social anxiety disorder.