Stuss D T, Craik F I, Sayer L, Franchi D, Alexander M P
Rotman Research Institute of Baycrest Centre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Psychol Aging. 1996 Sep;11(3):387-95. doi: 10.1037//0882-7974.11.3.387.
We examined the hypothesis that changes in memory performance of older normal participants are due to frontal lobe dysfunction by comparing three groups of normal individuals (young, middle-aged, and older) with three groups of patients who had documented lesions in specific frontal regions: unilateral right, unilateral left, and bilateral. All participants were given 4 successive learning trials on each of 3 lists of words: unrelated, related but presented in a pseudo-random order, and related and presented in a blocked format. We found significant correspondences in performance between the older normal participants and the (younger) frontal damaged groups. The qualitative nature of recall performance, particularly as measured by indices of organizational control processes, was similar between older normals and patients with frontal damage, particularly those with right frontal damage, but different from that normally exhibited by patients with focal limbic/memory dysfunction. These results add to the evidence that at least some of the decline in older people in tasks which measure executive or supervisory abilities is due to frontal system dysfunction.
我们通过比较三组正常个体（年轻人、中年人和老年人）与三组在特定额叶区域有明确病变的患者（右侧单侧、左侧单侧和双侧），检验了这样一个假设：正常老年参与者记忆表现的变化是由于额叶功能障碍所致。所有参与者在3组单词列表中的每组上都接受了4次连续的学习试验：不相关的、相关但以伪随机顺序呈现的、以及相关且以分组形式呈现的。我们发现老年正常参与者与（较年轻的）额叶受损组在表现上有显著对应关系。回忆表现的定性特征，特别是通过组织控制过程指标衡量的，在老年正常人和额叶受损患者之间相似，尤其是那些右侧额叶受损的患者，但与局灶性边缘系统/记忆功能障碍患者通常表现出的不同。这些结果进一步证明，在测量执行或监督能力的任务中，老年人至少部分表现下降是由于额叶系统功能障碍。
