Age differences in default mode activity on easy and difficult spatial judgment tasks

Age Differences in Default Mode Activity on Easy and Difficult Spatial Judgment Tasks

The default network is a system of brain areas that are engaged when the mind is not involved in goal-directed activity. Most previous studies of age-related changes in default mode processing have used verbal tasks. We studied non-verbal spatial tasks that vary in difficulty. We presented old and young participants with two spatial judgment tasks: an easy categorical judgment and a more demand...

The Self-Pleasantness Judgment Modulates the Encoding Performance and the Default Mode Network Activity

In this functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we evaluated the effect of self-relevance on cerebral activity and behavioral performance during an incidental encoding task. Recent findings suggest that pleasantness judgments reliably induce self-oriented (internal) thoughts and increase default mode network (DMN) activity. We hypothesized that this increase in DMN activity would re...

Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity.

Many philosophical and contemplative traditions teach that "living in the moment" increases happiness. However, the default mode of humans appears to be that of mind-wandering, which correlates with unhappiness, and with activation in a network of brain areas associated with self-referential processing. We investigated brain activity in experienced meditators and matched meditation-naive contro...

Comparison of Easy and Difficult Embryo Transfer Outcomes in In Vitro Fertilization Cycles

Adult Age Differences in Verbal Tasks

Two studies were conducted to determine the relative importance ofprocessing speed and knowledge as predictors of performance in simple verbal tasks within samples of young and old adults. Eight diJferent criterion tasks weie investigaled, and performance on each was found to be significantly related both to speed of processing and to quantity of word knowledge. It was also discovered that alth...