Department of Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel.
Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel.
Hippocampus. 2020 Feb;30(2):130-142. doi: 10.1002/hipo.23142. Epub 2019 Jul 26.
Memory deficits in aging are characterized by impaired hippocampus-mediated relational binding-the formation of links between items in memory. By reducing reliance on relational binding, unitization of two items into one concept enhances associative recognition among older adults. Can a similar enhancement be obtained when probing memory with recall? This question has yet to be examined, because recall has been assumed to rely predominantly on relational binding. Inspired by recent evidence challenging this assumption, we investigated individual differences in older adults' recall of unitized and nonunitized associations. Compared with successfully aging individuals, older adults with mild memory deficits, typically mediated by the hippocampus, were impaired in recall of paired-associates in a task which relies on relational binding (study: "PLAY-TUNNEL"; test: PLAY-T?). In stark contrast, the two groups showed similar performance when items were unitized into a novel compound word (study: "LOVEGIGGLE"; test: LOVEG?). Thus, boosting nonrelational aspects of recall enhances associative memory among aging individuals with subtle memory impairments to comparable levels as successfully aging older adults.
衰老导致的记忆缺陷的特征是海马体介导的关系绑定受损——即在记忆中的项目之间形成联系。通过减少对关系绑定的依赖，将两个项目组合成一个概念可以增强老年人的联想识别能力。在使用回忆来探测记忆时，是否可以获得类似的增强效果？这个问题尚未得到检验，因为人们认为回忆主要依赖于关系绑定。受最近挑战这一假设的证据的启发，我们研究了老年人对单元化和非单元化联想的回忆的个体差异。与成功衰老的个体相比，通常由海马体介导的轻度记忆缺陷的老年人在依赖关系绑定的任务中（研究：“PLAY-TUNNEL”；测试：PLAY-T？），对配对联想的回忆能力受损。相比之下，当项目组合成一个新的复合词时，两组的表现相似（研究：“LOVEGIGGLE”；测试：LOVEG？）。因此，增强回忆中非关系的方面可以提高有轻微记忆障碍的衰老个体的联想记忆能力，使其达到与成功衰老的老年人相当的水平。
