1 / 18

Language Functions in the Aging Brain: A Pathophysiological Exploration

Language Functions in the Aging Brain: A Pathophysiological Exploration. Dalia Cahana-Amitay VA Boston Healthcare System & Boston University School of Medicine. LSA 2013 Language & Aging Workshop. Gap: Neurobiological Mechanisms. What Do we Know?.

burton
Download Presentation

Language Functions in the Aging Brain: A Pathophysiological Exploration

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Language Functions in the Aging Brain:A Pathophysiological Exploration Dalia Cahana-Amitay VA Boston Healthcare System & Boston University School of Medicine LSA 2013 Language & Aging Workshop

  2. Gap: Neurobiological Mechanisms

  3. What Do we Know? • Cardiovascular and metabolic changes in the brain are factors underlying some of the language changes observed with age • Evidence from studies examining effects of • Hypertension • Diabetes • The metabolic syndrome

  4. Effects of Hypertension (HTN) and Diabetes Mellitus (DM) on Lexical Retrieval (Albert et al., 2009, JAGS) Percentage Difference in Naming Accuracy from Participants with HTN and DM + * + * * - p<.05 + - p<.10

  5. Effects of HTN and DM on Sentence Processing in Aging (Cahana-Amitay et al., 2013, JGPS)

  6. Effect of Metabolic Syndrome on Lexical Retrieval AND Sentence Processing Percent difference in Accuracy on Naming and Sentence Comprehension Tasks in those with Metabolic Syndrome * * * - p<.05

  7. Vascular and Metabolic Health: Pathophysiologic Consequences Decline in vascular health and occurrence of metabolic diseases, can result from chronic multisystem physiologic dysregulation(McEwen & Stellar, 1993; McEwen, 1998; Glei et al., 2005; Piazza et al., 2010). Physiologic dysregulation: the long-term effects of over/under-activation of physiological systems, in response to environmental stressors, often interpreted as “aging effects”

  8. Biological Systems Affected Systems • The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, • The sympathetic nervous system (SNS), • The immune system, • Cardiovascular and metabolic processes Biomarkers • Cardiovascular • Metabolic • Inflammatory • Example: glucocorticoids, such as cortisol, related to HPA system

  9. Cognitive effects of Physiologic Dysregulation Studied mostly in relation to memory Chronically elevated levels of cortisol among older adults are associated with impaired memory (e.g., Lupien et al., 2005; Lupien et al., 2007; MacLullich et al., 2005) Chronicity accelerates neural changes that “age” the brain

  10. Cumulative Effects • Not all biomarkers of physiologic dysregulation carry equal weight in predicting functional changes among older adults (Karlamangla et al., 2002) • Cumulative effect among older adults associated with: • Physical decline • Cognitive impairment • Mood changes • Increased risk of mortality (Goldman et al., 2006; Juster, McEwen, & Lupien, 2010; Seeman et al., 2010)

  11. Effects on Language? Unexplored BUT some Impairments in recall of confrontation naming (Seeman et al., 2010) Reduced category fluency (Greendale et al., 2000; MacLullich et al., 2005; Beluche et al., 2010)

  12. Why Look at Language and Physiologic Dysregulation? Age-related language decrements are associated with vascular and metabolic changes in brain regions which are also a prime target of stress-induced pathophysiological processes

  13. The Neural Correlates of Cortisol Regulation in Response to StressDedovic, Duchesne, Andrews, Engert, & Pruessner, 2009, NeuroImage)

  14. Research Questions (1) Does stress-induced physiologic dysregulation (measured by a summary index of biomarkers and self-ratings of stress) adversely affect lexical retrieval and sentence processing abilities (measured in terms of poorer accuracy)? (2) If so, are these effects independent of age effects?

  15. Biomarkers for Physiologic Dysregulation Index

  16. Perceived Stress Measures

  17. Predictions Those with greater degree of physiologic dysregulationand perceived stress will evidence worse language performance These effects will be independent of age

  18. Stress-Induced Pathophysiology of Language in the Aging Brain Existing evidence Aim 1 Aim 2

More Related