{"544891":{"#nid":"544891","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Senior Moments Explained: Older Adults Have Weaker Clutter Control","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EA new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology finds that older people struggle to remember important details because their brains can\u2019t resist the irrelevant \u201cstuff\u201d they soak up subconsciously. As a result, they tend to be less confident in their memories.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EResearchers looked at brain activity from EEG sensors and saw that older participants wandered into a brief \u201cmental time travel\u201d when trying to recall details. This journey into their subconscious veered them into a cluttered space that was filled with both relevant and irrelevant information. This clutter led to less confidence, even when their recollections were correct. Cluttering of the brain is one reason older people are more susceptible to manipulation, the researchers say. The study appears online in the journal \u003Cem\u003ENeuropsychologia\u003C\/em\u003E.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EResearchers showed older adults (60 years and up) and college students a series of pictures of everyday objects while EEG sensors were connected to their heads. Each photo was accompanied by a color and scene (e.g., living room). Participants were told to focus on one and ignore the other. An hour later, they were asked if the object was new or old, and if it matched the color and the scene.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ENeither age group was very good at recalling what they were told to ignore. Both did well remembering the object and what they were supposed to focus on.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cBut when we asked if they were sure, older people backed off their answers a bit. They weren\u2019t as sure,\u201d said Audrey Duarte, the associate professor of psychology who led the Georgia Tech study.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EShe and the researchers noticed differences in brain activity between the young and old. Older adults\u2019 brains spent more time and effort trying to reconstruct their memories.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWhile trying to remember, their brains would spend more time going back in time in an attempt to piece together what was previously seen,\u201d she said. \u201cBut not just what they were focused on \u2014 some of what they were told to ignore got stuck in their minds.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDuarte uses a cocktail party as an example. Two older people are talking to each other. And even though they\u2019re only concentrating on the conversation, their brains absorb the other noise in the room.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWhen it\u2019s time to remember the conversation, they may struggle a bit to recall some details. That\u2019s because their brains are also trying to decipher the other noises,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat music was playing? What was the couple next to them saying? That extra stuff shouldn\u2019t be in their memories at all, but it is. And it negatively impacts their ability to clearly remember the conversation.\u201d \u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EYounger people were quicker to recall details and used less brain power. The irrelevant information was never stored in the first place, which kept their memories relatively clutter-free. And that\u2019s why they were more confident than the older participants when remembering relevant details.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EA lack of confidence, Duarte said, can lead to manipulation. \u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIf someone tells you that you should remember it one way, you can be more easily persuaded if you lack confidence,\u201d she said. \u201cThis memory clutter that\u2019s causing low confidence could be a reason why older adults are often victims of financial scams, which typically occur when someone tries to trick them about prior conversations that didn\u2019t take place at all.\u201d \u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe study, \u201c\u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pubmed\/27094851\u0022\u003EAge-related deficits in selective attention during encoding increase demands on episodic reconstruction during context retrieval\u003C\/a\u003E,\u201d was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1125683. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EA new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology finds that older people struggle to remember important details because their brains can\u2019t resist the irrelevant \u201cstuff\u201d they soak up subconsciously.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Seniors struggle with memory because of clutter, study finds"}],"uid":"28797","created_gmt":"2016-06-15 09:53:41","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:21:53","author":"Lance Wallace","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2016-06-15T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2016-06-15T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"218911":{"id":"218911","type":"image","title":"brain-audrey-duarte","body":null,"created":"1449180151","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 22:02:31","changed":"1475894885","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:48:05","alt":"brain-audrey-duarte","file":{"fid":"197210","name":"audrey-duarte136.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/audrey-duarte136_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/audrey-duarte136_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":1140710,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/audrey-duarte136_0.jpg?itok=6JyZX3cS"}}},"media_ids":["218911"],"groups":[{"id":"1214","name":"News Room"}],"categories":[{"id":"146","name":"Life Sciences and Biology"},{"id":"135","name":"Research"}],"keywords":[{"id":"176","name":"aging"},{"id":"14224","name":"Audrey Duarte"},{"id":"1228","name":"memory"},{"id":"14342","name":"older adults"},{"id":"1222","name":"psychology"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[{"id":"71891","name":"Health and Medicine"}],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EJason Maderer\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:jason.maderer@comm.gatech.edu\u0022\u003Ejason.maderer@comm.gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["jason.maderer@comm.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}