Developmental change and intraindividual variability: Relating cognitive aging to cognitive plasticity, cardiovascular lability, and emotional diversity

Repeated assessments obtained over years can be used to measure individuals’ developmental change, whereas repeated assessments obtained over a few weeks can be used to measure individuals’ dynamic characteristics. Using data from a burst of measurement embedded in the Berlin Aging Study (BASE: Baltes & Mayer, 1999), we illustrate and examine how long-term changes in cognitive ability are related to short-term changes in cognitive performance, cardiovascular function, and emotional experience. Our findings suggest that “better” cognitive aging over approximately13 years was associated with greater cognitive plasticity, less cardiovascular lability, and less emotional diversity over approximately 2 weeks at age 90 years. The study highlights the potential benefits of multi-time scale longitudinal designs for the study of individual function and development

Knowledge Acquisition During Exam Preparation Improves Memory and Modulates Memory Formation

According to the schema-relatedness hypothesis, new experiences that make contact with existing schematic knowledge are more easily encoded and remembered than new experiences that do not. Here we investigate how real-life gains in schematic knowledge affect the neural correlates of episodic encoding, assessing medical students 3 months before and immediately after their final exams. Human participants were scanned with functional magnetic resonance imaging while encoding associative information that varied in relatedness to medical knowledge (face–diagnosis vs face–name pairs). As predicted, improvements in memory performance over time were greater for face–diagnosis pairs (high knowledge-relevance) than for face–name pairs (low knowledge-relevance). Improved memory for face–diagnosis pairs was associated with smaller subsequent memory effects in the anterior hippocampus, along with increased functional connectivity between the anterior hippocampus and left middle temporal gyrus, a region important for the retrieval of stored conceptual knowledge. The decrease in the anterior hippocampus subsequent memory effect correlated with knowledge accumulation, as independently assessed by a web-based learning platform with which participants studied for their final exam. These findings suggest that knowledge accumulation sculpts the neural networks associated with successful memory formation, and highlight close links between knowledge acquired during studying and basic neurocognitive processes that establish durable memories.  SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT In a sample of medical students, we tracked knowledge accumulation via a web-based learning platform and investigated its effects on memory formation before and after participants' final medical exam. Knowledge accumulation led to significant gains in memory for knowledge-related events and predicted a selective decrease in hippocampal activation for successful memory formation. Furthermore, enhanced functional connectivity was found between hippocampus and semantic processing regions. These findings (1) demonstrate that knowledge facilitates binding in the hippocampus by enhancing its communication with the association cortices, (2) highlight close links between knowledge induced in the real world and basic neurocognitive processes that establish durable memories, and (3) exemplify the utility of combining laboratory-based cognitive neuroscience research with real-world educational technology for the study of memory

Life satisfaction shows terminal decline in old age : Longitudinal evidence from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP)

Longitudinal data spanning 22 years, obtained from deceased participants of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP; N = 1,637; 70 to 100 year olds), were used to examine if and how life satisfaction exhibits terminal decline at the end of life. Changes in life satisfaction were more strongly associated with distance to death than with distance from birth (chronological age). Multi-phase growth models were used to identify a transition point roughly four years prior to death wherein the prototypical rate of decline in life satisfaction tripled from –0.64 to –1.94 T-score units per year. Further individual-level analyses suggest that individuals dying at older ages spend more years in the terminal periods of life satisfaction decline than individuals dying at earlier ages. Overall, the evidence suggests that late-life changes in aspects of well-being are driven by mortality-related mechanisms and characterized by terminal decline

Thermodynamic laws, economic methods and the productive power of energy

Energy plays only a minor role in orthodox theories of economic growth, because standard economic equlibrium conditions say that the output elasticity of a production factor, which measures the factor's productive power, is equal to the factor's share in total factor cost. Having commanded only a tiny cost share of about 5 percent so far, energy is often neglected altogether. On the other hand, energy conversion in the machines of the capital stock has been the basis of industrial growth. How can the physically obvious economic importance of energy be reconciled with the conditions for economic equilibrium, which result from the maximization of profit or overall welfare? We show that these equilibrium conditions no longer yield the equality of cost shares and output elasticities, if the optimization calculus takes technological constraints on the combinations of capital, labor, and energy into account. New econometric analyses of economic growth in Germany, Japan, and the USA yield output elasticities that are for energy much larger and for labor much smaller than their cost shares. Social consequences are discussed

Neuroanatomical Correlates of Fluid Intelligence in Healthy Adults and Persons with Vascular Risk Factors

The main objective of this study was to examine the effects of regional brain changes on cognitive decline and the modifying influence of vascular risk (VR) factors. We present latent difference score analyses of associations among 5-year changes in 12 regional brain volumes and age-sensitive cognitive functions in 87 adults (32 with identifiable VR factors). We found reliable individual differences in volume change for 11 of the 12 brain regions but not in the cognitive measures that showed average longitudinal decline. Thus, associations between rates of change in fluid intelligence and brain volumes could not be assessed. We observed, however, that lower levels of fluid intelligence were associated with smaller prefrontal and hippocampal volumes. Lower fluid intelligence scores were also linked to greater longitudinal shrinkage of the entorhinal cortex (EC). After accounting for the effects of age, sex, and VR factors, the orbitofrontal cortex and the prefrontal white matter (PFw) volumes as well as the 5-year change in the EC volume predicted fluid intelligence level. VR was independently associated with smaller prefrontal volumes and lower fluid intelligence. Thus, prefrontal and medial-temporal systems may play different roles in age-related differences and changes in cognitive performanc