Aging concept and cognitive aging

Dr Ravi SoniSenior ResidentDGMH, KGMU

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Aging Concept

• Aging is a pattern of life changes that occurs as one grows older.

• Gerontology is the study of individual and collective aging processes– Biological age– Psychological age– Social age– Legal age– Functional age

Normal Aging

Who is old?• Biological and psychological aging changes usually occur

gradually, over years or decades, and as a result, there is no single age at which people in general can be said to be old.

• Commonly people older than 65 are called ‘OLD’• Gerontologists often draw finer chronological demarcations:• Young-old: 65-74• Old-old: 75-84• Oldest-old: >85

What is cognition?

• Cognition is the set of all mental abilities and processes related to knowledge: attention, memory and working memory, judgment and evaluation, reasoning, problem solving, decision making, comprehension and production of language.

• These processes are not independent of one another– E.g. attention may be part of perception; language may be

part of memory and decision-making, etc.

Cognitive Abilities in Later Life: A ProcessingResource Model

• On an average aging is accompanied by decline in three fundamental cognitive-processing resources:

1. Processing Speed: reduced speed of information processing and response- most predictable

2. Working Memory: refers to short-term retention and manipulation of information held in conscious memory, a type of “online” cognitive processing. exa. Examples include consciously recalling a telephone number long enough to write it down

3. Sensory and Perceptual changes: decrements in visual and auditory acuity and other perceptual changes.

Park et al. 2002

Explanations of Cognitive AgingChanges

• Neuropathological and neuroimaging studies: changes in brain with aging

• Generalized atrophic and white matter changes as well as region-specific variations in the extent of cell loss

• Affected areas: Within the cortex, the prefrontal lobes are disproportionately affected, Hippocampus and entorhinal cortex are affected but data are conflictual

• Subcortical monoaminergic cell populations, are also subject to prominent decline in aging

• Spared areas: Temporo-parietal association areas• Areas in which there is relative sparing with age: the globus

pallidus, the paleocerebellum, the sensory cortices, and the pons

General Aging Trends

General Aging Trends

Factors That Influence Cognitive Aging

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THE END

“healthy children will not fear life if their elders have integrity enough not to fear death.”