#Sex differences in episodic #memory in early midlife: impact of reproductive aging.

http://mobile.journals.lww.com/menopausejournal/_layouts/15/oaks.journals.mobile/articleviewer.aspx?year=9000&issue=00000&article=97879

This study demonstrated that, in early midlife, women outperformed age-matched men across all memory measures, but sex differences were attenuated for postmenopausal women. Initial learning and memory retrieval were particularly vulnerable, whereas memory consolidation and storage were preserved. Findings underscore the significance of the decline in ovarian estradiol production in midlife and its role in shaping memory function

#Emotional brain states carry over and enhance future #memory formation

http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nn.4468.html

These results indicate that neural measures of an emotional experience can persist in time and bias how new, unrelated information is encoded and recollected.

#Estradiol Therapy After Menopause Mitigates Effects of #Stress on Cortisol and Working #Memory
https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article-abstract/doi/10.1210/jc.2017-00825/4587523?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Postmenopausal estradiol therapy (ET) can reduce the stress response. However, it remains unclear whether such reductions can mitigate effects of stress on cognition

Participants had received a median of randomized 4.7 years of estradiol (n = 21) or placebo (n = 21) treatment at time of participation in this study

Women assigned to estradiol exhibited blunted cortisol responses to CPT compared to placebo (p = .017), and lesser negative effects of stress on working memory (p = .048).

Conclusions
We present novel evidence suggesting ET may protect certain types of cognition in the presence of stress. Such estrogenic protection against stress hormone exposure may prove beneficial to both cognition and the neural circuitry that maintains and propagates cognitive faculties

Psychological well-being in #elderly adults with extraordinary episodic #memory
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0186413

The Northwestern University SuperAging Program studies a rare cohort of individuals over age 80 with episodic memory ability at least as good as middle-age adults to determine what factors contribute to their elite memory performance. As psychological well-being is positively correlated with cognitive performance in older adults, the present study examined whether aspects of psychological well-being distinguish cognitive SuperAgers from their cognitively average-for-age, same-age peers

The groups did not differ on demographic factors, including estimated premorbid intelligence. Consistent with inclusion criteria, SuperAgers had better episodic memory scores. Compared to cognitively average-for-age peers, SuperAgers endorsed greater levels of Positive Relations with Others. The groups did not differ on other PWB-42 subscales.

Discussion

While SuperAgers and their cognitively average-for-age peers reported similarly high levels of psychological well-being across multiple dimensions, SuperAgers endorsed greater levels of positive social relationships. This psychological feature could conceivably have a biological relationship to the greater thickness of the anterior cingulate gyrus and higher density of von Economo neurons previously reported in SuperAgers

The Effects of Physical #Exercise and Cognitive Training on #Memory and Neurotrophic Factors
https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/jocn_a_01164?journalCode=jocn

This study examined the combined effect of physical exercise and cognitive training on memory and neurotrophic factors in healthy, young adults. Ninety-five participants completed 6 weeks of exercise training, combined exercise and cognitive training, or no training (control). Both the exercise and combined training groups improved performance on a high-interference memory task, whereas the control group did not. In contrast, neither training group improved on general recognition performance, suggesting that exercise training selectively increases high-interference memory that may be linked to hippocampal function. Individuals who experienced greater fitness improvements from the exercise training (i.e., high responders to exercise) also had greater increases in the serum neurotrophic factors brain-derived neurotrophic factor and insulin-like growth factor-1. These high responders to exercise also had better high-interference memory performance as a result of the combined exercise and cognitive training compared with exercise alone, suggesting that potential synergistic effects might depend on the availability of neurotrophic factors. These findings are especially important, as memory benefits accrued from a relatively short intervention in high-functioning young adults

This time it’s personal: the #memory benefit of #hearing oneself
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09658211.2017.1383434


The production effect is the memory advantage of saying words aloud over simply reading them silently. It has been hypothesised that this advantage stems from production featuring distinctive information that stands out at study relative to reading silently. MacLeod (2011) (I said, you said: The production effect gets personal. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 18, 1197–1202. doi:10.3758/s13423-011-0168-8) found superior memory for reading aloud oneself vs. hearing another person read aloud, which suggests that motor information (speaking), self-referential information (i.e., “I said it”), or both contribute to the production effect. In the present experiment, we dissociated the influence on memory of these two components by including a study condition in which participants heard themselves read words aloud (recorded earlier) – a first for production effect research – along with the more typical study conditions of reading aloud, hearing someone else speak, and reading silently. There was a gradient of memory across these four conditions, with hearing oneself lying between speaking and hearing someone else speak. These results imply that oral production is beneficial because it entails two distinctive components: a motor (speech) act and a unique, self-referential auditory input.

A single night of #sleep loss impairs objective but not subjective working #memory performance in a sex-dependent manner


http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jsr.12651/full



Acute sleep deprivation can lead to judgement errors and thereby increases the risk of accidents, possibly due to an impaired working memory. However, whether the adverse effects of acute sleep loss on working memory are modulated by auditory distraction in women and men are not known. Additionally, it is unknown whether sleep loss alters the way in which men and women perceive their working memory performance. Thus, 24 young adults (12 women using oral contraceptives at the time of investigation) participated in two experimental conditions: nocturnal sleep (scheduled between 22:30 and 06:30 hours) versus one night of total sleep loss. Participants were administered a digital working memory test in which eight-digit sequences were learned and retrieved in the morning after each condition. Learning of digital sequences was accompanied by either silence or auditory distraction (equal distribution among trials). After sequence retrieval, each trial ended with a question regarding how certain participants were of the correctness of their response, as a self-estimate of working memory performance. We found that sleep loss impaired objective but not self-estimated working memory performance in women. In contrast, both measures remained unaffected by sleep loss in men. Auditory distraction impaired working memory performance, without modulation by sleep loss or sex. Being unaware of cognitive limitations when sleep-deprived, as seen in our study, could lead to undesirable consequences in, for example, an occupational context. Our findings suggest that sleep-deprived young women are at particular risk for overestimating their working memory performance

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One Month of #Cannabis Abstinence in Adolescents and Young Adults Is Associated With Improved #Memory

https://www.psychiatrist.com/JCP/article/Pages/2018/v79/17m11977.aspx

Among MJ-Abst participants, 55 (88.7%) met a priori criteria for biochemically confirmed 30-day continuous abstinence. There was an effect of abstinence on verbal memory (P = .002) that was consistent across 4 weeks of abstinence, with no time-by-abstinence interaction, and was driven by improved verbal learning in the first week of abstinence. MJ-Abst participants had better memory overall and at weeks 1, 2, 3 than MJ-Mon participants, and only MJ-Abst participants improved in memory from baseline to week 1. There was no effect of abstinence on attention: both groups improved similarly, consistent with a practice effect.

Conclusions: This study suggests that cannabis abstinence is associated with improvements in verbal learning that appear to occur largely in the first week following last use. Future studies are needed to determine whether the improvement in cognition with abstinence is associated with improvement in academic and other functional outcomes

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#Respiration modulates olfactory #memory consolidation in humans

http://www.jneurosci.org/content/early/2018/10/22/JNEUROSCI.3360-17.2018

Memories pass through three main stages in their development: encoding, consolidation, and retrieval. Growing evidence from animal and human studies suggests that respiration plays an important role in the behavioral and neural mechanisms associated with encoding and recognition. Specifically nasal, but not mouth, respiration entrains neural oscillations that enhance the encoding and recognition processes.

We demonstrate that respiration also affects the consolidation stage. Breathing through the nose compared to the mouth during consolidation enhances recognition memory. This demonstrates, first, that nasal respiration is important during the critical period were memories are reactivated and strengthened. Second, it suggests that the neural mechanisms responsible may emerge from nasal respiration.

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Hysterectomy Uniquely Impacts Spatial #Memory in a Rat Model: A Role for the Nonpregnant #Uterus in Cognitive Processes

https://academic.oup.com/endo/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1210/en.2018-00709/5154748?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Performance did not differ amongst groups in reference memory–only tasks, suggesting that the working memory domain is particularly sensitive to variations in surgical menopause. Following uterus removal, ovarian histology and estrous cycle monitoring demonstrated that ovaries continued to function, and serum assays indicated altered ovarian hormone and gonadotropin profiles by 2 months after surgery.

These results underscore the critical need to further study the contribution of the uterus to the female phenotype, including effects of hysterectomy with and without ovarian conservation, on the trajectory of brain and endocrine aging to decipher the impact of common variations in gynecological surgery in women.

Moreover, findings demonstrate that the nonpregnant uterus is not dormant, and indicate that there is an ovarian-uterus-brain system that becomes interrupted when the reproductive tract has been disrupted, leading to alterations in brain functioning.

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#Particulate matter and episodic #memory decline mediated by early neuroanatomic biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease

Evidence suggests exposure to particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter <2.5 μm (PM2.5) may increase the risk for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias..

..Long-term PM2.5 exposure was associated with increased Alzheimer’s disease pattern similarity scores, which accounted for 22.6% (95% CI: 1% to 68.9%) and 10.7% (95% CI: 1.0% to 30.3%) of the total adverse PM2.5 effects on Trials 1–3 and List B, respectively. The observed associations remained after excluding incident cases of dementia and stroke during the follow-up, or further adjusting for small-vessel ischaemic disease volumes.

Our findings illustrate the continuum of PM2.5 neurotoxicity that contributes to early decline of immediate free recall/new learning at the preclinical stage, which is mediated by progressive atrophy of grey matter indicative of increased Alzheimer’s disease risk, independent of cerebrovascular damage

https://academic.oup.com/brain/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/brain/awz348/5628036?redirectedFrom=fulltext

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Extra virgin #olive oil improves synaptic activity, short‐term plasticity, #memory, and neuropathology in a tauopathy model

In recent years, increasing evidence has accumulated supporting the health benefits of extra virgin olive oil (EVOO). Previous studies showed that EVOO supplementation improves Alzheimer's disease (AD)‐like amyloidotic phenotype of transgenic mice..

..At the end of the treatment, compared with control mice receiving EVOO displayed improved memory and cognition which was associated with increased basal synaptic activity and short‐term plasticity. This effect was accompanied by an upregulation of complexin 1, a key presynaptic protein. Moreover, EVOO treatment resulted in a significant reduction of tau oligomers and phosphorylated tau at specific epitopes.

Our findings demonstrate that EVOO directly improves synaptic activity, short‐term plasticity, and memory while decreasing tau neuropathology in the hTau mice. These results strengthen the healthy benefits of EVOO and further support the therapeutic potential of this natural product not only for AD but also for primary tauopathies.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/acel.13076

Partial and Total #Sleep Deprivation Interferes with Neural Correlates of Consolidation of #Fear Extinction #Memory
https://2medical.news/2020/11/20/partial-and-total-sleep-deprivation-interferes-with-neural-correlates-of-consolidation-of-fear-extinction-memory/

We assessed the impact of total and partial sleep loss on neural correlates of fear conditioning and extinction learning and recall in healthy young adults. Methods Participants (56.3% female, age 24.8±3.4) were randomized to a night of normal sleep (NS, n=48), sleep restriction (SR, n=53), or sleep deprivation (SD, n=53). All completed fear conditioning and extinction learning phases the following morning. Extinction recall was tested …

#Smoking is associated with impaired verbal learning and #memory performance in women more than men

https://2medical.news/2021/05/14/smoking-is-associated-with-impaired-verbal-learning-and-memory-performance-in-women-more-than-men/

Effect of Transcranial Near-Infrared #Light 1068 nm Upon #Memory Performance in Aging Healthy Individuals: A Pilot Study

https://2medical.news/2021/10/23/effect-of-transcranial-near-infrared-light-1068%E2%80%89nm-upon-memory-performance-in-aging-healthy-individuals-a-pilot-study/

Higher working #memory capacity and distraction-resistance associated with strategy (not action) #game playing in younger adults, but #puzzle game playing in older adults

https://2medical.news/2023/08/30/higher-working-memory-capacity-and-distraction-resistance-associated-with-strategy-not-action-game-playing-in-younger-adults-but-puzzle-game-playing-in-older-adults/