Cognitive Ageing

The Institute of Psychological Sciences’ team of experimental psychologists is examining how cognitive abilities change with healthy and pathological ageing. Working with medics and clinical psychologists in local and international collaborations, the focus of this group is to improve the understanding of cognitive decline and to offer non-pharmacological interventions to ameliorate memory loss.

Chris Moulin’s work considers ageing in the context of contemporary memory theory. Ironically, one of the processes necessary to healthy memory function is the ability to forget - or to inhibit unnecessary information. One prominent theory of cognitive decline in both Alzheimer’s disease and healthy ageing is that this inhibitory function is impaired. This means that it should be possible to improve memory function by restricting interfering information. The group’s work has demonstrated a 30 per cent memory performance improvement using ‘errorless learning’ techniques, where information is learnt or re-learnt without these interfering errors.

Catriona Morrison’s research examines the relationship between genes and behaviour, in particular the Apolipoprotein E Є4 allele. The presence of this allele is predictive of people at risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. An international focus for research is to see how the presence of this allele relates to cognitive performance in older adults. In this way, it might be possible to detect pre-clinical changes in cognitive function and begin treatment earlier. For instance, Catriona has shown that siblings of people with Alzheimer’s disease with the Є4 allele are particularly impaired on a test that measures people’s ability to name difference odours. The group also uses the study of older adults to explore cognitive mechanisms and theoretical models of cognition in more detail. For example, Alzheimer’s disease can be used to test models of inhibitory function and its neural basis, but also other important ideas such as awareness. This greater understanding can in turn lead to new techniques for intervention and diagnosis. When psychological research into these groups is combined with neuroimaging capabilities, the results are extremely exciting - we can begin to see the reorganisation of the brain, as people begin to compensate for their memory difficulties.

References

Moulin, C.J.A. Perfect, T.J., Conway, M.A., North, A.S., Jones, R.W., & James, N. (2002). Retrieval Induced Forgetting in Alzheimer’s disease. Neuropsychologia, 40: 862-867.

Handley, O.J., Bayer, A., Owen, M.J., Williams, J., Muir, J.L. & Morrison, C.M. (2003). The influence of the Apolipoprotein E gene, age and positive family history of Alzheimer’s disease on olfactory function: Diagnostic utility for Alzheimer’s disease. Proceedings of the Society for Neuroscience Meeting, New Orleans, November, 2003.