Transformative clergy small group experience: addressing leader burnout and creating a culture of thriving in ministry

Drawing upon psychological and sociological research, this project reviews the core elements and causes of clergy burnout and reflects theologically on the image of a life rooted within the healthy and thriving vine of Christ from John 15 as the ideal for clergy in ministry, framed within Luther’s theology of the Cross. It then models a year-long clergy small group experience for Evangelical Lutheran Church in America pastors in southern Minnesota, correlating the elements of burnout with the image of the vine through practices incorporating Mezirow, Dirkx, and Cranton’s adult transformative learning theory and Bloom’s model of pastoral identity formation

Influence of aging on the neural correlates of autobiographical, episodic, and semantic memory retrieval

We used fMRI to assess the neural correlates of autobiographical, semantic, and episodic memory retrieval in healthy young and older adults. Participants were tested with an eventrelated paradigm in which retrieval demand was the only factor varying between trials. A spatio-temporal partial least square analysis was conducted to identify the main patterns of activity characterizing the groups across conditions. We identified brain regions activated by all three memory conditions relative to a control condition. This pattern was expressed equally in both age groups and replicated previous findings obtained in a separate group of younger adults. We also identified regions whose activity differentiated among the different memory conditions. These patterns of differentiation were expressed less strongly in the older adults than in the young adults, a finding that was further confirmed by a barycentric discriminant analysis. This analysis showed an age-related dedifferentiation in autobiographical and episodic memory tasks but not in the semantic memory task or the control condition. These findings suggest that the activation of a common memory retrieval network is maintained with age, whereas the specific aspects of brain activity that differ with memory content are more vulnerable and less selectively engaged in older adults. Our results provide a potential neural mechanism for the well-known age differences in episodic/autobiographical memory, and preserved semantic memory, observed when older adults are compared with younger adults

Effects of age on goal-dependent modulation of episodic memory retrieval

Retrieval gating refers to the ability to modulate the retrieval of features of a single memory episode according to behavioral goals. Recent findings demonstrate that younger adults engage retrieval gating by attenuating the representation of task-irrelevant features of an episode. Here, we examine whether retrieval gating varies with age. Younger and older adults incidentally encoded words superimposed over scenes or scrambled backgrounds that were displayed in one of three spatial locations. Participants subsequently underwent fMRI as they completed two memory tasks: the background task, which tested memory for the word's background, and the location task, testing memory for the word's location. Employing univariate and multivariate approaches, we demonstrated that younger, but not older adults, exhibited attenuated reinstatement of scene information when it was goal-irrelevant (during the location task). Additionally, in younger adults only, the strength of scene reinstatement in the parahippocampal place area during the background task was related to item and source memory performance. Together, these findings point to an age-related decline in the ability to engage retrieval gating

Age differences in brain activity related to unsuccessful declarative memory retrieval

Although memory recall is known to be reduced with normal aging, little is known about the patterns of brain activity that accompany these recall failures. By assessing faulty memory, we can identify the brain regions engaged during retrieval attempts in the absence of successful memory and determine the impact of aging on this functional activity. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine age differences in brain activity associated with memory failure in three memory retrieval tasks: autobiographical (AM), episodic (EM) and semantic (SM). Compared to successful memory retrieval, both age groups showed more activity when they failed to recall a memory in regions consistent with the salience network (SLN), a brain network also associated with non-memory errors. Both groups also showed strong functional coupling among SLN regions during incorrect trials and in intrinsic patterns of functional connectivity. In comparison to young adults, older adults demonstrated (1) less activity within the SLN during unsuccessful AM trials; (2) weaker intrinsic functional connectivity between SLN nodes and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; and (3) less differentiation of SLN functional connectivity during incorrect trials across memory conditions. These results suggest that the SLN is engaged during recall failures, as it is for non-memory errors, which may be because errors in general have particular salience for adapting behavior. In older adults, the dedifferentiation of functional connectivity within the SLN across memory conditions and the reduction of functional coupling between it and prefrontal cortex may indicate poorer inter-network communication and less flexible use of cognitive control processes, either while retrieval is attempted or when monitoring takes place after retrieval has failed

Normal aging modulates prefrontoparietal networks underlying multiple memory processes

A functional decline of brain regions underlying memory processing represents a hallmark of cognitive aging. Although a rich literature documents age-related differences in several memory domains, the effect of aging on networks that underlie multiple memory processes has been relatively unexplored. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging during working memory and incidental episodic encoding memory to investigate patterns of age-related differences in activity and functional covariance patterns common across multiple memory domains. Relative to younger subjects, older subjects showed increased activation in left dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex along with decreased deactivation in the posterior cingulate. Older subjects showed greater functional covariance during both memory tasks in a set of regions that included a positive prefronto-parietal-occipital network as well as a negative network that spanned the default mode regions. These findings suggest that the memory process-invariant recruitment of brain regions within prefronto-parietal-occipital network increases with aging. Our results are in line with the dedifferentiation hypothesis of neurocognitive aging, thereby suggesting a decreased specialization of the brain networks supporting different memory network