Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, The University of Edinburgh, Chancellor’s Building, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.
Aging (Albany NY). 2023 Jun 19;15(13):5990-6010. doi: 10.18632/aging.204808.
Cognitive decline in spatial memory is seen in aging. Understanding affected processes in aging is vital for developing methods to improve wellbeing. Daily memory persistence can be influenced by events around the time of learning or by prior experiences in early life. Fading memories in young can last longer if a novel event is introduced around encoding, a process called behavioral tagging. Based on this principle, we asked what processes are affected in aging and if prior training can rescue them. Two groups of aged rats received training in an appetitive delayed matching-to-place task. One of the groups additionally received prior training of the same task in young and in mid-life, constituting a longitudinal study. The results showed long-term memory decline in late aging without prior training. This would reflect affected encoding and consolidation. On the other hand, short-term memory was preserved and novelty at memory reactivation and reconsolidation enabled memory maintenance in aging. Prior training improved cognition through facilitating task performance, strengthening short-term memory and intermediate memory, and enabling encoding-boosted long-term memory. Implication of these findings in understanding brain mechanisms in cognitive aging and in beneficial effects of prior training is discussed.
空间记忆认知能力衰退在衰老中可见。了解衰老过程中受影响的机制对于开发改善幸福感的方法至关重要。日常记忆的持久性可能受到学习时周围事件的影响，也可能受到早期生活中先前经历的影响。如果在编码时引入新的事件，年轻个体的记忆衰退可以持续更长时间，这个过程称为行为标记。基于这个原理，我们想知道衰老过程中哪些机制受到影响，以及先前的训练是否可以挽救它们。两组老年大鼠在一种奖赏性延迟匹配位置任务中接受训练。其中一组大鼠还在年轻时和中年时接受了相同任务的预先训练，构成了一项纵向研究。结果表明，没有预先训练的老年后期会出现长期记忆衰退。这反映了编码和巩固过程受到影响。另一方面，短期记忆得以保留，记忆再激活和再巩固时的新颖性使老年个体的记忆得以维持。预先训练通过促进任务表现、增强短期记忆和中期记忆以及实现编码增强的长期记忆来改善认知。这些发现对于理解认知衰老中的大脑机制以及先前训练的有益效果具有重要意义。
