Perceived event resolution-rather than time-allows older adults to reduce the negativity of their memories.

In addition to showing greater memory positivity soon after negative events, older adults can be more likely than younger adults to show decreases in memory negativity as events grow more distant. We recently showed that this latter effect was not present when adults were asked to rate memories of the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic (March-May 2020): after a short (June/July 2020) and long delay (October/November 2020), older age was associated with greater reflections on positive aspects, but with no difference in negative aspects. We suggested that older adults did not show decreased negativity because the pandemic was still prevalent in their daily lives. The present study examines whether perceived event resolution-rather than time on its own-may be necessary to show age-related decreases in negativity by surveying participants during a time when many may have felt like the pandemic had resolved (Summer 2021). Once again, age was associated with increased ratings of the positive aspects, but at this timepoint, age was also associated with decreased ratings of the negative aspects. These results suggest that older adults may more successfully decrease the negativity of their memories compared to younger adults only when they feel that events have resolved.

Distinct stress-related changes in intrinsic amygdala connectivity predict subsequent positive and negative memory performance.

Experiencing stress before an event can influence how that event is later remembered. In the current study, we examine how individual differences in one's physiological response to a stressor are related to changes to underlying brain states and memory performance. Specifically, we examined how changes in intrinsic amygdala connectivity relate to positive and negative memory performance as a function of stress response, defined as a change in cortisol. Twenty-five participants underwent a social stressor before an incidental emotional memory encoding task. Cortisol samples were obtained before and after the stressor to measure individual differences in stress response. Three resting state scans (pre-stressor, post-stressor/pre-encoding and post-encoding) were conducted to evaluate pre- to post-stressor and pre- to post-encoding changes to intrinsic amygdala connectivity. Analyses examined relations between greater cortisol changes and connectivity changes. Greater cortisol increases were associated with a greater decrease in prefrontal-amygdala connectivity following the stressor and a reversal in the relation between prefrontal-amygdala connectivity and negative vs. positive memory performance. Greater cortisol increases were also associated with a greater increase in amygdala connectivity with a number of posterior sensory regions following encoding. Consistent with prior findings in non-stressed individuals, pre- to post-encoding increases in amygdala-posterior connectivity were associated with greater negative relative to positive memory performance, although this was specific to lateral rather than medial posterior regions and to participants with the greatest cortisol changes. These findings suggest that stress response is associated with changes in intrinsic connectivity that have downstream effects on the valence of remembered emotional content.

The power of negative and positive episodic memories.

The power of episodic memories is that they bring a past moment into the present, providing opportunities for us to recall details of the experiences, reframe or update the memory, and use the retrieved information to guide our decisions. In these regards, negative and positive memories can be especially powerful: Life's highs and lows are disproportionately represented in memory, and when they are retrieved, they often impact our current mood and thoughts and influence various forms of behavior. Research rooted in neuroscience and cognitive psychology has historically focused on memory for negative emotional content. Yet the study of autobiographical memories has highlighted the importance of positive emotional memories, and more recently, cognitive neuroscience methods have begun to clarify why positive memories may show powerful relations to mental wellbeing. Here, we review the models that have been proposed to explain why emotional memories are long-lasting (durable) and likely to be retrieved (accessible), describing how in overlapping-but distinctly separable-ways, positive and negative memories can be easier to retrieve, and more likely to influence behavior. We end by identifying potential implications of this literature for broader topics related to mental wellbeing, education, and workplace environments.

With age comes well-being: older age associated with lower stress, negative affect, and depression throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Objectives: Despite initial concerns about older adult's emotional well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic, reports from the first months of the pandemic suggested that older adults were faring better than younger adults, reporting lower stress, negative affect, depression, and anxiety. In this study, we examined whether this pattern would persist as the pandemic progressed.Method: A convenience sample of 1,171 community-dwelling adults in the United States, ages 18-90, filled out surveys on various metrics of emotional well-being starting in March 2020 and at various time points through April 2021. We created time bins to account for the occurrence of significant national events, allowing us to determine how age would relate to affective outcomes when additional national-level emotional events were overlaid upon the stress of the pandemic.Results: Older age was associated with lower stress, negative affect, and depressive symptomatology, and with higher positive affect, and this effect was consistent across time points measured from March, 2020 through April, 2021. Age was less associated with measures of worry and social isolation, but older adults were more worried about their personal health throughout the pandemic.Conclusion: These results are consistent with literature suggesting that older age is associated with increased resilience in the face of stressful life experiences and show that this pattern may extend to resilience in the face of a prolonged real-world stressor.Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/13607863.2021.2010183 .

Older adults remember more positive aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The initial phase of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic changed our lives dramatically, with stay-at-home orders and extreme physical distancing requirements. The present study suggests that how adults remember these disruptions depends, in part, on their age. In two surveys collected from American and Canadian participants during Summer 2020 (n = 551) and Fall 2020 (n = 506), older age (across ages 18-90 years) was associated with greater reflections on positive aspects of the initial phase of the pandemic. While the pandemic is a shared experience, the way it is remembered may differ across generations, with older age leading to a greater focus on the positive aspects. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Frontostriatal functional connectivity supports reward-enhanced memory in older adults.

Both younger and older adults prioritize reward-associated stimuli in memory, but there has been little research on possible age differences in the neural mechanisms mediating this effect. In the present study, we examine neural activation and functional connectivity in healthy younger and older adults to test the hypothesis that older adults would engage prefrontal regions to a greater extent in the service of reward-enhanced memory. While undergoing MRI, target stimuli were presented after high- or low-reward cues. The cues indicated the reward value for successfully recognizing the stimulus on a memory test 24 hours later. We replicated prior findings that both older and younger adults had better memory for high- compared to low-reward stimuli. Critically, in older but not younger adults, this enhanced subsequent memory for high-reward items was supported by greater connectivity between the caudate and bilateral inferior frontal gyrus. The findings add to the growing literature on motivation-cognition interactions in healthy aging and provide novel findings of the neural underpinnings of reward-motivated encoding.

Retrieval of Emotional Events from Memory.

The enhancing effects of emotion on memory have been well documented; emotional events are often more frequently and more vividly remembered than their neutral counterparts. Much of the prior research has emphasized the effects of emotion on encoding processes and the downstream effects of these changes at the time of retrieval. In the current review, we focus specifically on how emotional valence influences retrieval processes, examining how emotion influences the experience of remembering an event at the time of retrieval (retrieval as an end point) as well as how emotion alters the way in which remembering the event affects the underlying memory representation and subsequent retrievals (retrieval as a starting point). We suggest ways in which emotion may augment or interfere with the selective enhancement of particular memory details, using both online and offline processes, and discuss how these effects of emotion may contribute to memory distortions in affective disorders.

Older adults recruit dorsomedial prefrontal cortex to decrease negativity during retrieval of emotionally complex real-world events.

Recent research from our lab has highlighted a prefrontally-mediated control mechanism that decreases the subjective richness of negative episodic events during older adults' episodic memory retrieval. The current study examined whether such a mechanism was also engaged during retrieval of real-world negative events. In a scanned autobiographical memory task, 56 participants (ages 18-83) were presented with images associated with the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings. Images fell into three categories: primarily positive, primarily negative, and mixed-valence. Participants retrieved a personal memory associated with each image, elaborated on that memory in as much detail as possible, and rated memory positivity and memory negativity. Unlike in recent episodic memory studies, young and older adults did not differ in how prefrontal regions contributed to retrieval of autobiographical memories associated with primarily negative images. However, there was an age-related reversal in the role of dorsomedial prefrontal recruitment during retrieval of autobiographical memories associated with mixed-valence images: Activity was associated with increased negativity ratings in young adults and decreased negativity in older adults. These findings are the first evidence that older adults engage a prefrontally-mediated mechanism at the time of retrieval to reduce the negativity of memories for real-world emotional events, and further suggest that they may only do so in the case of emotional ambiguity. Such a mechanism could have important implications for understanding how older adults may respond to and evaluate negative events in their daily lives.

The role of the amygdala in emotional experience during retrieval of personal memories.

Although the role of the amygdala in emotional memory retrieval has long been established, how such engagement varies depending on valence and retrieval context is less clearly understood. Participants retrieved personal memories associated with primarily positive, primarily negative, and mixed-valence images, pressing a button when successful. The button press divided trials into search and elaboration phases. Participants provided positivity and negativity ratings immediately following each trial, and then again in a post-retrieval survey. The relation between amygdala recruitment and emotionality exhibited a four-way interaction, with no other significant main effects or interactions. The interaction was driven by a temporal shift in the role of amygdala recruitment during retrieval of memories associated with mixed-valence images: Negativity ratings were supported more by search-related activity whereas positivity was more strongly associated with elaboration. Amygdala activity during retrieval relates to emotional experience in more complicated ways than previously understood. When participants were able to consider positive and negative aspects of the same event, amygdala recruitment during search and elaboration were associated with opposite behavioural effects. Such findings suggest that the amygdala may support distinct aspects of emotional experience for the same memory depending on when during retrieval it is recruited.

Age-by-Emotion Interactions in Memory Retrieval Processes: An Event-Related Potential Study.

OBJECTIVES: Although research has identified age-by-emotion interactions in memory performance and in neural recruitment during retrieval, it remains unclear which retrieval processes are affected. The temporal resolution of event-related potentials (ERPs) provides a way to examine different component processes that operate during retrieval. METHODS: In the present study, younger and older adults encoded neutral and emotional images paired with neutral titles. ERPs were assessed during a recognition memory task in which participants viewed neutral titles and indicated whether each had been presented during encoding. RESULTS: An age-related posterior-to-anterior shift began in a time window typically associated with recollection-related processes (500-800 ms) while an age-by-emotion interaction occurred only during a later measurement window (800-1,200 ms). DISCUSSION: These findings suggest an effect of age on mechanisms supporting retrieval of episodic content, prior to post-retrieval processing. The potential relations to different types of detail retrieval are discussed. Further, the later age-by-emotion interactions suggest that age influences the effect of emotion on post-retrieval processes, specifically.

Older adults use a prefrontal regulatory mechanism to reduce negative memory vividness of a highly emotional real-world event.

Previous research has revealed an age-related shift in how individuals recall events from their personal past, with older adults reporting events that are more positive than young adults. We recently showed that age-by-valence interactions may be partially driven by a prefrontally mediated control mechanism recruited by older adults during retrieval of negative laboratory events to reduce phenomenological richness. Specifically, age was associated with greater increases in prefrontal recruitment during retrieval of negative relative to positive events, with this recruitment linked to decreases in hippocampal activity and subjective vividness ratings. In the current study, we examined whether older adults may rely on a similar mechanism during retrieval of a complex, highly emotional real-world event. Participants (n=58, age: 18-87 years) were presented with images related to the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings and were asked to retrieve a memory associated with each image. Images cued participants with either negative (associated with fear, destruction, and sadness) or positive (images of hope, resilience, support) features. This study replicated previous episodic memory tasks: age was associated with more negative hippocampal connectivity with dorsomedial prefrontal regions during retrieval of memories triggered by negative relative to positive cues. Such findings suggest that older adults may be recruiting a similar regulatory mechanism during retrieval of both negative laboratory stimuli and highly negative events from their past. These findings are discussed in relation to previous work showing that young and older adults interact differently with the negative details related to a highly negative event.

It gets better with time: Enhancement of age-related positivity effect in the six months following a highly negative public event.

Age is associated with shifts toward more positive memory retrieval. The current study examined these shifts following a negative public event. Participants completed two surveys examining emotional responses to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, one immediately following the attack and another 6 months later. Age was associated with different effects of time on how individuals reflected on this event. Time was associated with an increased focus on negative components in young adults but a decreased focus in older adults. These findings reveal a role of time in age-related positivity effects. (PsycINFO Database Record

Finding the good in the bad: age and event experience relate to the focus on positive aspects of a negative event.

All lives contain negative events, but how we think about these events differs across individuals; negative events often include positive details that can be remembered alongside the negative, and the ability to maintain both representations may be beneficial. In a survey examining emotional responses to the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, the current study investigated how this ability shifts as a function of age and individual differences in initial experience of the event. Specifically, this study examined how emotional importance (i.e. self-reported emotional arousal and personal significance), involvement (i.e. self and friend/family involvement in the 2013 Boston Marathon and self-involvement in prior marathons), and self-reported surprise upon hearing about the event related to the tendency to report focusing on the negative and positive aspects of the bombings. Structural equation models revealed that while greater emotional importance and surprise were associated with a greater focus on negative elements, involvement and age were associated with increased consideration of positive aspects. Further, emotional importance was more strongly related to an increased focus on negative aspects for young adults and an increased focus on positive aspects for older adults, highlighting a tendency for older adults to enhance positive features of an otherwise highly negative event.

Prefrontally-mediated alterations in the retrieval of negative events: Links to memory vividness across the adult lifespan.

Prior research has identified age-by-valence interactions in both behavior and neural recruitment; age has been associated with increased retrieval of positive relative to negative information as well as an increased tendency to recruit prefrontal regions during negative event retrieval and for this recruitment to correspond to decreased hippocampal connectivity. To date, the explicit relation between prefrontal recruitment and memory phenomenology has not been examined. The current study examined the link between these two measures by examining age-by-valence interactions in the relation between prefrontal recruitment and subjective ratings of memory vividness. Participants (ages 18-85) encoded visual images paired with verbal titles. During a scanned retrieval session, they were presented with titles and asked whether each had been seen with an image during encoding. Participants provided vividness ratings following retrieval of each image. Age was associated with greater prefrontally-mediated alterations in negative event phenomenology, with age-related increases in the relation between ventral prefrontal regions and negative event vividness and age-related decreases in the relation between dorsal prefrontal regions and negative event vividness. This analysis confirmed a critical role of PFC regions in age-by-valence interactions, where age reversed the relation between PFC recruitment and the subjective richness of retrieved memory representation. These findings are consistent with studies that reveal age-related enhancements in emotion regulation, and suggest that older adults may be engaging in these processes during retrieval of negative events.

Age-Related Reversals in Neural Recruitment across Memory Retrieval Phases.

Over the last several decades, neuroimaging research has identified age-related neural changes that occur during cognitive tasks. These changes are used to help researchers identify functional changes that contribute to age-related impairments in cognitive performance. One commonly reported example of such a change is an age-related decrease in the recruitment of posterior sensory regions coupled with an increased recruitment of prefrontal regions across multiple cognitive tasks. This shift is often described as a compensatory recruitment of prefrontal regions due to age-related sensory-processing deficits in posterior regions. However, age is not only associated with spatial shifts in recruitment, but also with temporal shifts, in which younger and older adults recruit the same neural region at different points in a task trial. The current study examines the possible contribution of temporal modifications in the often-reported posterior-anterior shift. Participants, ages 19-85, took part in a memory retrieval task with a protracted retrieval trial consisting of an initial memory search phase and a subsequent detail elaboration phase. Age-related neural patterns during search replicated prior reports of age-related decreases in posterior recruitment and increases in prefrontal recruitment. However, during the later elaboration phase, the same posterior regions were associated with age-related increases in activation. Further, ROI and functional connectivity results suggest that these posterior regions function similarly during search and elaboration. These results suggest that the often-reported posterior-anterior shift may not reflect the inability of older adults to engage in sensory processing, but rather a change in when they recruit this processing.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The current study provides evidence that the often-reported posterior-anterior shift in aging may not reflect a global sensory-processing deficit, as has often been reported, but rather a temporal modification in this processing in which older adults engage the same neural regions during a detail elaboration phase that younger adults engage during memory search. In other words, older adults may ultimately be able to engage the same processes as younger adults during some cognitive tasks when given the time to do so. Future research should examine the generalizability of this effect and the importance of encouraging older adults to engage in these processes through task instruction or questions.

The effects of song familiarity and age on phenomenological characteristics and neural recruitment during autobiographical memory retrieval.

Recent research suggests that emotional music clips can serve as a highly successful tool for eliciting rich autobiographical memories, and that the utility of these cues may be related to their subjective familiarity. The current study was designed to examine the effects of familiarity on phenomenological characteristics and neural recruitment during retrieval of autobiographical memories elicited by musical cues. Further, we were interested in understanding how these effects differ as a function of age. In an event-related functional neuroimaging study, participants retrieved autobiographical memories associated with age-specific popular musical clips. Participants rated song familiarity, as well as the temporal specificity and emotional valence of each memory. Song familiarity was associated with increased dmPFC activity and ratings of temporal specificity and positivity across participants. In addition, behavioral and neuroimaging findings suggest age differences in familiarity-related effects in which familiarity was more associated with enhancement of memory detail in young adults and affective positivity in older adults. These findings highlight important age-related shifts in how individuals retrieve autobiographical events and how personally-relevant musical cues may be used to facilitate memory retrieval.

Prefrontal contributions to relational encoding in amnestic mild cognitive impairment.

Relational memory declines are well documented as an early marker for amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). Episodic memory formation relies on relational processing supported by two mnemonic mechanisms, generation and binding. Neuroimaging studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have primarily focused on binding deficits which are thought to be mediated by medial temporal lobe dysfunction. In this study, prefrontal contributions to relational encoding were also investigated using fMRI by parametrically manipulating generation demands during the encoding of word triads. Participants diagnosed with aMCI and healthy control subjects encoded word triads consisting of a category word with either, zero, one, or two semantically related exemplars. As the need to generate increased (i.e., two- to one- to zero-link triads), both groups recruited a core set of regions associated with the encoding of word triads including the parahippocampal gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, and superior parietal lobule. Participants diagnosed with aMCI also parametrically recruited several frontal regions including the inferior frontal gyrus and middle frontal gyrus as the need to generate increased, whereas the control participants did not show this modulation. While there is some functional overlap in regions recruited by generation demands between the groups, the recruitment of frontal regions in the aMCI participants coincides with worse memory performance, likely representing a form of neural inefficiency associated with Alzheimer's disease.

Effects of internal and external vividness on hippocampal connectivity during memory retrieval.

Successful memory for an image can be supported by retrieval of one's personal reaction to the image (i.e., internal vividness), as well as retrieval of the specific details of the image itself (i.e., external vividness). Prior research suggests that memory vividness relies on regions within the medial temporal lobe, particularly the hippocampus, but it is unclear whether internal and external vividness are supported by the hippocampus in a similar way. To address this open question, the current study examined hippocampal connectivity associated with enhanced internal and external vividness ratings during retrieval. Participants encoded complex visual images paired with verbal titles. During a scanned retrieval session, they were presented with the titles and asked whether each had been seen with an image during encoding. Following retrieval of each image, participants were asked to rate internal and external vividness. Increased hippocampal activity was associated with higher vividness ratings for both scales, supporting prior evidence implicating the hippocampus in retrieval of memory detail. However, different patterns of hippocampal connectivity related to enhanced external and internal vividness. Further, hippocampal connectivity with medial prefrontal regions was associated with increased ratings of internal vividness, but with decreased ratings of external vividness. These findings suggest that the hippocampus may contribute to increased internal and external vividness via distinct mechanisms and that external and internal vividness of memories should be considered as separable measures.

Age influences the relation between subjective valence ratings and emotional word use during autobiographical memory retrieval.

Recent research reveals an age-related increase in positive autobiographical memory retrieval using a number of positivity measures, including valence ratings and positive word use. It is currently unclear whether the positivity shift in each of these measures co-occurs, or if age uniquely influences multiple components of autobiographical memory retrieval. The current study examined the correspondence between valence ratings and emotional word use in young and older adults' autobiographical memories. Positive word use in narratives was associated with valence ratings only in young adults' narratives. Older adults' narratives contained a consistent level of positive word use regardless of valence rating, suggesting that positive words and concepts may be chronically accessible to older adults during memory retrieval, regardless of subjective valence. Although a relation between negative word use in narratives and negative valence ratings was apparent in both young and older adults, it was stronger in older adults' narratives. These findings confirm that older adults do vary their word use in accordance with subjective valence, but they do so in a way that is different from young adults. The results also point to a potential dissociation between age-related changes in subjective valence and in positive word use.

Neural recruitment and connectivity during emotional memory retrieval across the adult life span.

Although research has identified age-related changes in neural recruitment during emotional memory encoding, it is unclear whether these differences extend to retrieval. In this study, participants engaged in a recognition task during a functional magnetic resonance imaging scan. They viewed neutral titles and indicated whether each title had been presented with an image during the study phase. Neural activity and connectivity during retrieval of titles associated with positive and negative images were compared with age (treated as a continuous variable) included as a regressor of interest. Aging was associated with increased prefrontal activation for retrieval of positive and negative memories, but this pattern was more widespread for negative memories. Aging also was associated with greater negative connectivity between a left hippocampal seed region and multiple regions of prefrontal cortex, but this effect of age occurred during negative retrieval only. These findings demonstrate that age-related changes in prefrontal recruitment and connectivity during retrieval depend on memory valence. The use of a life span approach also emphasized both continuities and discontinuities in recruitment and connectivity across the adult life span, highlighting the insights to be gained from using a full life span sample.