Age-related neural changes underlying long-term recognition of musical sequences

Aging is often associated with decline in brain processing power and neural predictive capabilities. To challenge this notion, we used magnetoencephalography (MEG) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to record the whole-brain activity of 39 older adults (over 60 years old) and 37 young adults (aged 18–25 years) during recognition of previously memorised and varied musical sequences. Results reveal that when recognising memorised sequences, the brain of older compared to young adults reshapes its functional organisation. In fact, it shows increased early activity in sensory regions such as the left auditory cortex (100 ms and 250 ms after each note), and only moderate decreased activity (350 ms) in medial temporal lobe and prefrontal regions. When processing the varied sequences, older adults show a marked reduction of the fast-scale functionality (250 ms after each note) of higher-order brain regions including hippocampus, ventromedial prefrontal and inferior temporal cortices, while no differences are observed in the auditory cortex. Accordingly, young outperform older adults in the recognition of novel sequences, while no behavioural differences are observed with regards to memorised ones. Our findings show age-related neural changes in predictive and memory processes, integrating existing theories on compensatory neural mechanisms in non-pathological aging

Criticism of the paper “The association between early career informal mentorship in academic collaborations and junior author performance”

The authors of this letter represent a large student body who have generally had especially positive experiences with female mentors’ advice and mentorships and do not support the conclusions of the article “The association between early career informal mentorship in academic collaborations and junior author performance” because its conclusions regarding gender reach beyond the article’s scope and because the quality of mentorships cannot be analysed only through citation counts. Publications are not equivalent to learning outcomes or professional advancement. After careful review of the aforementioned article, we see numerous scientific flaws. The causal inferences that can be drawn from the observed effects of gender on the mentor-protégé relationship are insubstantial and other aspects of the paper are limited in the reductionist design of their mentor-protégé relationship assessment, which is based on the scientific impact of future papers