Age exacerbates the negative effect of depression on executive functioning in racial and ethnic minorities.

Age and depression may interact to produce a "double jeopardy" for cognitive impairment, and executive functioning, in cognitively unimpaired aging. Few studies have considered middle age or the ethnoracial diversity of subjects, despite evidence of more severe cognitive outcomes in historically minoritized people. In this pilot study, we investigated the impact of age on depression-related cognitive impairment and the underlying brain volumes in middle-aged non-Hispanic White adults (116), and Hispanic and Black adults (60), with a total number of 176 adults. The result shows a significant interaction between age and depression for executive functioning, specifically for middle-aged Hispanic and Black adults, but not non-Hispanic White adults. Prefrontal cortex volumes, which were reduced in the Black and Hispanic compared to the non-Hispanic White adults, partially mediated the relationship between depression level and executive functioning, across age and ethnoracial group. Collectively, these results suggest that the negative impact of depression on executive functioning and Prefrontal cortex volumes integrity may be exacerbated by age and that historically minoritized people may be particularly sensitive to this double jeopardy.

More than the sum of its parts: investigating episodic memory as a multidimensional cognitive process.

Why do we remember some events but forget others? Previous studies attempting to decode successful vs. unsuccessful brain states to investigate this question have met with limited success, potentially due, in part, to assessing episodic memory as a unidimensional process, despite evidence that multiple domains contribute to episodic encoding. Using a novel machine learning algorithm known as "transfer learning", we leveraged visual perception, sustained attention, and selective attention brain states to better predict episodic memory performance from trial-to-trial encoding electroencephalography (EEG) activity. We found that this multidimensional treatment of memory decoding improved prediction performance compared to traditional, unidimensional, methods, with each cognitive domain explaining unique variance in decoding of successful encoding-related neural activity. Importantly, this approach could be applied to cognitive domains outside of memory. Overall, this study provides critical insight into the underlying reasons why some events are remembered while others are not.

Empirically derived psychosocial-behavioral phenotypes in Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino older adults enrolled in HABS-HD: Associations with AD biomarkers and cognitive outcomes.

INTRODUCTION: Identification of psychosocial-behavioral phenotypes to understand within-group heterogeneity in risk and resiliency to Alzheimer's disease (AD) within Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino older adults is essential for the implementation of precision health approaches. METHODS: A cluster analysis was performed on baseline measures of socioeconomic resources (annual income, social support, occupational complexity) and psychiatric distress (chronic stress, depression, anxiety) for 1220 racially/ethnically minoritized adults enrolled in the Health and Aging Brain Study-Health Disparities (HABS-HD). Analyses of covariance adjusting for sociodemographic factors examined phenotype differences in cognition and plasma AD biomarkers. RESULTS: The cluster analysis identified (1) Low Resource/High Distress (n = 256); (2) High Resource/Low Distress (n = 485); and (3) Low Resource/Low Distress (n = 479) phenotypes. The Low Resource/High Distress phenotype displayed poorer cognition and higher plasma neurofilament light chain; differences between the High Resource/Low Distress and Low Resource/Low Distress phenotypes were minimal. DISCUSSION: The identification of psychosocial-behavioral phenotypes within racially/ethnically minoritized older adults is crucial to the development of targeted AD prevention and intervention efforts.

Age exacerbates the negative effect of depression on executive functioning in racial and ethnic minorities.

Age and depression may interact to produce a "double jeopardy" for cognitive impairment, and executive functioning, in cognitively unimpaired aging. Few studies have considered middle age or the ethnoracial diversity of subjects, despite evidence of more severe cognitive outcomes in historically minoritized people. In this pilot study, we investigated the impact of age on depression-related cognitive impairment and the underlying brain volumes in middle-aged non-Hispanic White adults (116), and Hispanic and Black adults (60), with a total number of 176 adults. The result shows a significant interaction between age and depression for executive functioning, specifically for middle-aged Hispanic and Black adults, but not non-Hispanic White adults. Prefrontal cortex volumes, which were reduced in the Black and Hispanic compared to the non-Hispanic White adults, partially mediated the relationship between depression level and executive functioning, across age and ethnoracial group. Collectively, these results suggest that the negative impact of depression on executive functioning and Prefrontal cortex volumes integrity may be exacerbated by age and that historically minoritized people may be particularly sensitive to this double jeopardy.

Age-related reductions in arousal-enhanced memory are moderated by trait emotion regulation.

Emotional arousal is known to enhance episodic memory in young adults. However, compared to valence, little is known about how healthy aging impacts arousal-enhanced memory effects. Furthermore, while emotion regulation is believed to improve with age, it is unclear how individual differences in emotion regulation influence arousal-enhanced memory. In this large-scale online study, we investigated the impact of age and individual differences in emotion regulation on arousal-enhanced memory. During encoding, participants made arousal ratings about negative, neutral, and positive images, and we compared their subsequent memory of high and low-arousal images. We found the impact of emotional arousal on memory was reduced with age, especially for older adults who habitually suppress their emotions. Our findings show that arousal-related memory benefits are reduced with advancing age, and that individual differences in habitual usage of emotion regulation impact these age-related alterations.

Lower Body Mass Index at Baseline Is Related to Steeper Cognitive Decline in the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative Cohort.

OBJECTIVE: Midlife obesity is a risk factor for dementia, whereas obesity in older age may be protective of cognition, a phenomenon known as the "obesity paradox." The mechanisms underlying this phenomenon and the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and cognitive function over time remain unclear. METHODS: In 1399 adults with and without mild cognitive impairment (median age 73.6 years) from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, we modeled the effects of baseline BMI on within-person trajectories of cognitive decline using Latent Growth Curve Modeling. We also tested if the effects of BMI on cognitive decline are global or specific to memory, executive function, or language. RESULTS: Higher baseline BMI was associated with better memory ( ßBMI = 0.06, p < .05) and worse executive function ( ßBMI = -0.05, p < .05) and not associated with language. Independent of baseline diagnosis, higher baseline BMI was associated with slower rate of decline in executive function, memory, and language ( ßBMI = 0.13, 0.12, and 0.12, respectively; p < .01). Higher BMI was not associated with the intercept ( ßBMI = 0.04, p = .059) or change ( ßBMI = 0.04, p = .415) in a global cognitive factor. CONCLUSIONS: We found that higher baseline BMI was associated with slower cognitive decline in participants with and without mild cognitive impairment diagnosis. Higher BMI in this context seems to be protective of cognitive function for people at risk for dementia. Our findings also support domain-specific effects of obesity on various cognitive functions rather than a final common pathway.

At-home wireless sleep monitoring patches for the clinical assessment of sleep quality and sleep apnea.

Although many people suffer from sleep disorders, most are undiagnosed, leading to impairments in health. The existing polysomnography method is not easily accessible; it's costly, burdensome to patients, and requires specialized facilities and personnel. Here, we report an at-home portable system that includes wireless sleep sensors and wearable electronics with embedded machine learning. We also show its application for assessing sleep quality and detecting sleep apnea with multiple patients. Unlike the conventional system using numerous bulky sensors, the soft, all-integrated wearable platform offers natural sleep wherever the user prefers. In a clinical study, the face-mounted patches that detect brain, eye, and muscle signals show comparable performance with polysomnography. When comparing healthy controls to sleep apnea patients, the wearable system can detect obstructive sleep apnea with an accuracy of 88.5%. Furthermore, deep learning offers automated sleep scoring, demonstrating portability, and point-of-care usability. At-home wearable electronics could ensure a promising future supporting portable sleep monitoring and home healthcare.

An updated account of overgeneral autobiographical memory in depression.

Previous meta-analyses on Overgeneral Autobiographical Memory (OGM) and depression have emphasised clinically diagnosed current depression, leaving questions about subthreshold and remitted depression. Further, numerous studies of OGM remain unconsidered due to a focus on one testing paradigm, the Autobiographical Memory Test (AMT). We conducted a meta-analysis on OGM in depression including remitted, subthreshold, and currently depressed samples and incorporating non-AMT studies. Our novel use of three-level models enabled robust variance analyses with multiple effect sizes from each study while controlling for dependencies across effect sizes. With results from 67 published and unpublished works, ours is the largest meta-analysis to date on OGM in depression. We identified decreased autobiographical memory specificity (Hedges' g = -0.73) and increased categoricity (Hedges' g = 0.77) for depressed individuals over controls. Moderator analyses suggested more severe OGM in current, clinical MDD than subthreshold and remitted depression, although deficits were still present in the latter groups. Our results highlight the importance of utilising a broader range of testing paradigms and considering non-clinical depression in future work.

Neural reinstatement of context memory in adults with autism spectrum disorder.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is associated with episodic memory impairment. However, episodic memories include a variety of contextual details, and it is difficult to solely rely on behavioral data to assess how specifically (i.e. event-specific reinstatement) an event is remembered. We applied encoding-retrieval representational similarity (ERS) analysis to EEG data to assess event-specific ERS for object-context associations in a sample of 34 adults (17 with, 17 without ASD). Participants studied objects presented alongside 2 contextual features: scene/color, and attention was directed toward one object-context relationship. At retrieval, memory was assessed for the object and both contexts. Behavioral results revealed no group differences in item or context memory performance. ERS results revealed group temporal differences in reinstatement. Results may indicate differences in both encoding (i.e. fewer perceptual details) and retrieval (i.e. ineffectively skipping through memory fragments) in ASD and should be further investigated in studies modulating the perceptual detail required for memory decisions. Results highlight the utility of ERS as a methodology used to evaluate episodic reinstatement even in the absence of behavioral differences in memory performance.

Covid-19-Stress Associated With Worse Sleep Quality, Particularly With Increasing Age.

OBJECTIVES: Based on socioemotional selectivity theory, one might predict that older adults' well-being would be less negatively affected by coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19)-stress, as with other stressors, than younger people. However, whether sleep quality, which is negatively affected by aging, is similarly protected from the negative consequences of Covid-19-stress with age is unknown. Here, we examined the association between Covid-19-stress, above and beyond general-stress, and sleep quality and how it varies by age. METHOD: From December 2020 to April 2021, 386 adults reported their Covid-19-stress, sleep quality, and resilience in an online study. RESULTS: While older age was related to lower Covid-19-stress, Covid-19-stress was associated with worse sleep quality with greater age. DISCUSSION: These results suggest that at least some aspects of one's well-being may be more susceptible to the negative consequences of stress with increasing age. Our results might be better understood via the strength and vulnerability integration model, which posits that older adults have increased susceptibility to prolonged and unavoidable stress.

Depressive symptoms are associated with reduced positivity preferences in episodic memory in aging.

Age-related positivity preferences are represented as greater memory benefits for positive and/or reduced benefits for negative material with age. It is unknown if positivity preferences are limited to older adults without depressive symptoms. In this fMRI study, adults across the lifespan with a range of depressive symptoms were scanned as they rated emotional intensity of images and subsequently completed a recognition memory task. Behavioral, univariate, and functional connectivity analyses provided evidence for interactive effects between age and depressive symptoms. With low depressive symptoms, typical age-related emotional preferences emerged: younger age was associated with better memory for negative images, and this benefit was reduced with older age. With increasing depressive symptoms in older age, positivity preferences were reduced, manifesting as improvements in negative memory. The neural data highlighted potential underlying mechanisms, including reductions in prefrontal cortex connectivity reflecting diminished ability to engage regulatory processes to reduce negative affect in older participants with higher depressive symptoms. These findings suggest that depressive symptoms in older adulthood reduce positivity preferences through alterations in neural networks underlying emotion regulation.

Fatty Acid-Binding Protein 3 Is a Marker of Neurodegeneration and White Matter Hyperintensity Burden in Mexican American Older Adults.

We examined ethnoracial differences in fatty acid binding protein (FABP)-a family of intracellular lipid carriers-and clarified FABP3 associations with gray and white matter. Relative to Mexican Americans (MAs), FABP3 was higher in Non-Hispanic Whites (NHWS, p < 0.001). Regressions revealed, independent of traditional AD markers, FABP3 was associated with neurodegeneration (B = -0.08, p = 0.003) and WMH burden (B = 0.18, p = 0.03) in MAs, but not in NHWs (ps > 0.18). Findings suggest FABP3 is related to neural health within MAs and highlight its potential as a prognostic marker of brain health in ethnoracially diverse older adults.

Greater sleep variance related to decrements in memory performance and event-specific neural similarity: a racially/ethnically diverse lifespan sample.

Successful memory performance depends on overlap between neural representations at encoding and retrieval. With older age, neural similarity, memory performance, and sleep quality decline. Regardless of age, racial/ethnic minorities tend to experience poor sleep, which may contribute to poor memory. Previous studies have not investigated memory performance, neural similarity, sleep quality, and age in diverse participants. Here, we recruited racially/ethnically diverse adults across the lifespan and examined night-to-night sleep quality in relation to memory performance and encoding-retrieval similarity. We employed item-specific, representational similarity analysis (not confounded by effort, word perception, or differences in electroencephalography signal amplitude) to assess neural similarity for intact and recombined paired associates. Greater sleep variance and poorer memory performance were more strongly associated with older age. Interestingly, sleep variance was positively associated with neural similarity for intact pairs. This relationship was stronger with younger age and for racial/ethnic minorities. For recombined pairs, greater sleep variance was associated with reduced neural similarity. Thus, varied sleep may induce greater reliance on familiarity, while consistent sleep may support recollection.

Neural Reinstatement of Overlapping Memories in Young and Older Adults.

When we update our episodic memories with new information, mnemonic competition between old and new memories may result because of the presence of shared features. Behavioral studies suggest that this competition can lead to proactive interference, resulting in unsuccessful memory updating, particularly for older adults. It is difficult with behavioral data alone to measure the reactivation of old, overlapping memories during retrieval and its impact on memory for new memories. Here, we applied encoding-retrieval representational similarity (ERS) analysis to EEG data to estimate event-specific encoding-related neural reinstatement of old associations during the retrieval of new ones and its impact on memory for new associations in young and older adults. Our results showed that older adults' new associative memory performance was more negatively impacted by proactive interference from old memories than that of young adults. In both age groups, ERS for old associative memories was greater for trials for which new associative memories were forgotten than remembered. In contrast, ERS for new associative memories was greater when they were remembered than forgotten. In addition, older adults showed relatively attenuated target (i.e., new associates) and lure (i.e., old associates) ERS effects compared to younger adults. Collectively, these results suggest that the neural reinstatement of interfering memories during retrieval contributes to proactive interference across age, whereas overall attenuated ERS effect in older adults might reflect their reduced memory fidelity.

Evaluation of classification approaches for distinguishing brain states predictive of episodic memory performance from electroencephalography: Abbreviated Title: Evaluating methods of classifying memory states from EEG.

Previous studies have attempted to separate single trial neural responses for events a person is likely to remember from those they are likely to forget using machine learning classification methods. Successful single trial classification holds potential for translation into the clinical realm for real-time detection of memory and other cognitive states to provide real-time interventions (i.e., brain-computer interfaces). However, most of these studies-and classification analyses in general- do not make clear if the chosen methodology is optimally suited for the classification of memory-related brain states. To address this problem, we systematically compared different methods for every step of classification (i.e., feature extraction, feature selection, classifier selection) to investigate which methods work best for decoding episodic memory brain states-the first analysis of its kind. Using an adult lifespan sample EEG dataset collected during performance of an episodic context encoding and retrieval task, we found that no specific feature type (including Common Spatial Pattern (CSP)-based features, mean, variance, correlation, features based on AR model, entropy, phase, and phase synchronization) outperformed others consistently in distinguishing different memory classes. However, extracting all of these feature types consistently outperformed extracting only one type of feature. Additionally, the combination of filtering and sequential forward selection was the optimal method to select the effective features compared to filtering alone or performing no feature selection at all. Moreover, although all classifiers performed at a fairly similar level, LASSO was consistently the highest performing classifier compared to other commonly used options (i.e., naïve Bayes, SVM, and logistic regression) while naïve Bayes was the fastest classifier. Lastly, for multiclass classification (i.e., levels of context memory confidence and context feature perception), generalizing the binary classification using the binary decision tree performed better than the voting or one versus rest method. These methods were shown to outperform alternative approaches for three orthogonal datasets (i.e., EEG working memory, EEG motor imagery, and MEG working memory), supporting their generalizability. Our results provide an optimized methodological process for classifying single-trial neural data and provide important insight and recommendations for a cognitive neuroscientist's ability to make informed choices at all stages of the classification process for predicting memory and other cognitive states.

Factors that protect against poor sleep quality in an adult lifespan sample of non-Hispanic Black and non-Hispanic White adults during COVID-19: A cross-sectional study.

Introduction: Stress in relation to the Coronavirus disease 19 pandemic (i.e., COVID-19, COVID stress) may be linked with poor sleep quality. The association between stress that is specific to the COVID-19 pandemic and sleep quality has been understudied, particularly in racially diverse people across the adult lifespan. Here, we investigated self-reported sleep quality in relation to COVID stress and factors that may protect against experiencing poor sleep quality from high COVID stress, including social support and religiosity. Method: We recruited non-Hispanic Black (n = 73) and non-Hispanic White (n = 178) participants across the adult lifespan (18-76 years) using an online, cross-sectional design during the COVID-19 pandemic (March 2021-June 2021). We asked participants to report information regarding demographics (age, race/ethnicity, years of education), sleep (sleep quality, sleep habits), and positive (social support, religious activities) and negative (events of discrimination, depression, general stress, COVID stress) psychosocial factors. Results: Across age and racial groups, better sleep habits were associated with better sleep quality, and higher COVID stress was linked to poorer sleep quality. Black participants reported higher quality sleep than White participants (p = 0.006). They also endorsed greater private and internal religiosity (p's < 0.001). Across racial groups, moderation analyses revealed a protective effect of religiosity against poor sleep (p's < 0.006). Specifically, individuals with high religious activity and high COVID stress did not experience poor sleep quality, but individuals with low religious activity and high COVID stress demonstrated poor sleep quality. These results remained significant when controlling for general stress. Discussion: Protective factors, such as religiosity, may mitigate the negative associations between high COVID stress and poor sleep quality.

Intact context memory performance in adults with autism spectrum disorder.

Research on memory in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) finds increased difficulty encoding contextual associations in episodic memory and suggests executive dysfunction (e.g., selective attention, cognitive flexibility) and deficient metacognitive monitoring as potential contributing factors. Findings from our lab suggest that age-related impairments in selective attention contribute to those in context memory accuracy and older adults tended to show dependence in context memory accuracy between relevant and irrelevant context details (i.e., hyper-binding). Using an aging framework, we tested the effects of selective attention on context memory in a sample of 23 adults with ASD and 23 typically developed adults. Participants studied grayscale objects flanked by two types of contexts (color, scene) on opposing sides and were told to attend to only one object-context relationship, ignoring the other context. At test, participants made object and context recognition decisions and judgment of confidence decisions allowing for an evaluation of context memory performance, hyper-binding, and metacognitive performance for context judgments in a single task. Results showed that adults with ASD performed similarly to typically developed adults on all measures. These findings suggest that context memory performance is not always disrupted in adults with ASD, even when demands on selective attention are high. We discuss the need for continued research to evaluate episodic memory in a wider variety of adults with ASD.

A systematic review and meta-analysis of individual differences in naturalistic sleep quality and episodic memory performance in young and older adults.

Better sleep quality has been associated with better episodic memory performance in young adults. However, the strength of sleep-memory associations in aging has not been well characterized. It is also unknown whether factors such as sleep measurement method (e.g., polysomnography, actigraphy, self-report), sleep parameters (e.g., slow wave sleep, sleep duration), or memory task characteristics (e.g., verbal, pictorial) impact the strength of sleep-memory associations. Here, we assessed if the aforementioned factors modulate sleep-memory relationships. Across age groups, sleep-memory associations were similar for sleep measurement methods, however, associations were stronger for PSG than self-report. Age group moderated sleep-memory associations for certain sleep parameters. Specifically, young adults demonstrated stronger positive sleep-memory associations for slow wave sleep than the old, while older adults demonstrated stronger negative associations between greater wake after sleep onset and poorer memory performance than the young. Collectively, these data show that young and older adults maintain similar strength in sleep-memory relationships, but age impacts the specific sleep correlates that contribute to these relationships.

Context Memory Encoding and Retrieval Temporal Dynamics are Modulated by Attention across the Adult Lifespan.

Episodic memories are multidimensional, including simple and complex features. How we successful encode and recover these features in time, whether these temporal dynamics are preserved across age, even under conditions of reduced memory performance, and the role of attention on these temporal dynamics is unknown. In the current study, we applied time-resolved multivariate decoding to oscillatory electroencephalography (EEG) in an adult lifespan sample to investigate the temporal order of successful encoding and recognition of simple and complex perceptual context features. At encoding, participants studied pictures of black and white objects presented with both color (low-level/simple) and scene (high-level/complex) context features and subsequently made context memory decisions for both features. Attentional demands were manipulated by having participants attend to the relationship between the object and either the color or scene while ignoring the other context feature. Consistent with hierarchical visual perception models, simple visual features (color) were successfully encoded earlier than were complex features (scenes). These features were successfully recognized in the reverse temporal order. Importantly, these temporal dynamics were both dependent on whether these context features were in the focus of one's attention, and preserved across age, despite age-related context memory impairments. These novel results support the idea that episodic memories are encoded and retrieved successively, likely dependent on the input and output pathways of the medial temporal lobe (MTL), and attentional influences that bias activity within these pathways across age.

Depression and episodic memory across the adult lifespan: A meta-analytic review.

Episodic memory deficits have increasingly been recognized as a cognitive feature of depression. To quantify these deficits and determine how they are moderated by various tasks (e.g., stimulus valence) and participant (e.g., age, depression diagnosis) variables, we conducted a three-level meta-analysis on 995 effect sizes derived from 205 studies with 236 unique comparisons between depressive and control groups on episodic memory measures. Overall, depression was associated with small to moderate deficits in episodic memory, Hedges' g = -0.36, 95% CI [-0.41 to -0.31]. Effects were larger in older age, in diagnosed compared to subthreshold depression, and in those taking medication for depression; effects did not differ between those with current and remitted symptoms. Stimulus valence moderated the effects, such that depression-related deficits were particularly pronounced for positive and neutral stimuli, but not for negative stimuli. Educational attainment served as a sort of protective factor, in that at higher levels of education, depressed group performance was more similar to that of controls. These findings confirm the episodic memory deficits in depression but highlight the important differences in the size of these deficits across a number of task- and participant-related variables. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).