Health Psychology

Front 1

What are the two main types of evidence demonstrating an association between physical activity and cognition? Which provides more consistent results? Which is the better type of evidence?

Back 1

Epidemiological evidence and randomized control studies. One shows a reduced dementia risk and the other shows increased memory.

Epidemiological studies provide more consistent results since randomized control studies usually don't continue long enough to see the beneficial effects of exercise.

Randomized control studies are however better evidence because they can establish cause and effect.

Front 2

Describe the study by Fenesi et al

Back 2

Studied the risk for dementia in over 1000 people.

Found that those with a genetic risk factor were more susceptible to developing dementia, regardless of PA levels.

For those without the genetic risk, PA significantly reduced chances of developing dementia.

Front 3

What is high-interference memory? Based on animal models, why would high-interference memory benefit from exercise? In the human study discussed in class, which exercise training program benefited high-interference memory and why?

Back 3

Being able to remember old images from new images.

Exercise can cause neurogenesis in the hippocampus, a region in the brain responsible for memory.

HIIT benefited the high-interference memory the most because exercise needs to be either intense or prolonged to have a significant effect on brain health.

Front 4

What does it mean when we say “Cognitive processes are dynamic”? How do these dynamics play out in the brain?

Back 4

They are constantly active and are constantly changing.

E.g. seeing a similar face elicits much more complex cognitive processing than seeing an unfamiliar face

Front 5

What does brain signal complexity reflect with respect to cognition?

Back 5

A more complex the signal reflects more and heavier information processing. It also reflects greater distributed information processing among different brain regions, as opposed to local communication.

Front 6

What type of information processing is represented at fine versus coarse timescales of the EEG signal?

Back 6

Fine: local brain communication/processing

Coarse: distributed communication across multiple brain regions

Front 7

How does brain signal complexity change during development and aging?

Back 7

Neural complexity increases as we age from infancy to adulthood. The abilities to use both local communication and distributed communication both increase.

As we get older, we get regional losses in brain volume and decays in myelin, and we become less efficient at using distributed communication processing.

Front 8

Describe the results by Park & Reuter-Lorenz 2009. Compare and contrast high versus low performing older adults.

Back 8

Used fMRI to scan the brains of both younger and older adults.

Older adults were separated into high cognitive performers and low cognitive performers based on a memory task.

Older adults used different brain regions for certain tasks compared to the younger adults.

Low cognitive performing adults had a brain activity similar to that of a younger adult (uses a lot of distributed information processing)

High cognitive performing adults were able to recruit new brain regions and use more local information processing.

This shows that adults who performed better cognitively had brains that were able to adapt to the aging infrastructure. They were able to compensate for the loss of structure in the brain by using new regions in the brain and relying more on local information processing.

Front 9

Describe the study on Heisz, Gould, & McIntosh, 2015 on physical activity, cognition and brain signal complexity.

Back 9

Surveyed a bunch of older adults on physical activity levels.

High active adults engaged in PA much more frequently than low active adults; no difference were observed in frequency of socialcognitive activities.

The high active adults were more engaged in structural exercise - resistance training, aerobics, stretching.

Greater local information processing in the brain for the high active adults compared to the low active.

Suggests that exercises might be able to facilitate the neural adaption associated with greater cognitive performance in older adults.

Front 10

Why might it be advantageous for an aging brain to adapt?

Back 10

As the brain loses its structure with aging, using the same type of processing as you did in your younger years may be inefficient. It is better for the brain to adapt and use new regions to compensate for the losses.