Specificity of inhibitory deficits in normal aging and Alzheimer's disease

NEUROBIOLOGY OF AGING

卷:30

Review

Collette, Fabienne^1,2  Schmidt, Christina²  Salmon, Eric^2,3 

[1] Univ Liege, Neuropsychol Unit, Dept Cognit Sci, B-4000 Liege, Belgium

[2] Univ Liege, Cyclotron Res Ctr, B-4000 Liege, Belgium

[3] CHU, Dept Neurol, Liege, Belgium

关键词: Inhibition;    Interference resolution;    Normal aging;    Alzheimer's disease;    Executive functions;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2007.09.007

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

Deficits of suppression abilities are frequently observed in normal aging and Alzheimer's disease. However, few studies have explored these deficits in the two populations simultaneously using a large battery of tasks. The aim of the present study was to explore if the pattern of performance presented by elderly subjects and AD patients is in agreement with theoretical frameworks [Wilson, S.P., Harnishifeger, K.K., 1998. The development of efficient inhibition: Evidence from directed forgetting tasks. Dev. Rev. 18, 86-123; see also Nigg J.T., 2000. On inhibition/disinhibition in developmental psychopathology: views from cognitive and personality psychology and a working inhibition taxonomy. Psychol. Bull. 126, 220-246], distinguishing between the concepts of inhibition (a voluntary suppression of irrelevant information) and interference (an automatic suppression process occurring prior to conscious awareness). The results obtained demonstrated that (1) there is an alteration of the inhibitory process in normal elderly subjects; (2) inhibitory and interference resolution processes are quantitately less efficient in AD, since these patients present a correct performance only for information which leaves weak traces in memory. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

【 授权许可】

Free