Interest in the role of the noradrenergic system in the modulation of emotional memories has recently increased. This study briefly reviews this timely line of research with a specific focus on aging. After having identified surprisingly few studies that investigated emotional memory in older adults from a neurobiological perspective, we found a significant interaction between noradrenergic act...

Cognitive decline in speeded abilities, executive function, and memory is believed to typify normal aging. However, there is significant variability in cognitive function with advanced age and some reports of relatively intact cognitive function among a subset of older individuals. The present study consists of a cluster analysis to examine the patterns of cognitive function in middle-aged and ...

To our knowledge jumping kinematics have never been studied in elderly persons. This study was aimed at examining the influence of aging on vertical jump performance and on interjoint coordination. Two groups of adults, 11 young men ages 18-25 years and 11 older men ages 79-100 years, were filmed while performing a maximal squat jump. Compared to young adults, jump height was significantly decr...

Rapidly growing research reveals complex yet systematic consequences of collaboration on memory in young adults, but much less is known about this phenomenon in older adults. Young and older adults studied a list of categorized words and took three successive recall tests. Test 1 and 3 were always taken individually, and Test 2 was done either in triads or alone. Despite older adults recalling ...

Until the mid-20th century, infectious diseases were the major cause of morbidity and mortality in humans. Massive vaccination campaigns, antibiotics, antivirals, and advanced public health measures drastically reduced sickness and death from infections in children and younger adults. However, older adults (>65 y of age) remain vulnerable to infections, and infectious diseases remain among the ...

We examined effects of normal aging on category learning, comparing performance and strategy choice on two learning tasks: one where a one-dimensional rule governed category membership and one where a multidimensional rule defined category structure. Paradoxically, we demonstrated that older adults can outperform younger adults in some types of complex category learning. In the current task—whi...

Two experiments compared young and older adults in order to examine whether aging leads to a larger dependence on visual articulatory movements in auditory-visual speech perception. These experiments examined accuracy and response time in syllable identification for auditory-visual (AV) congruent and incongruent stimuli. There were also auditory-only (AO) and visual-only (VO) presentation modes...

This spotlight offers a unique window into factors affecting aging in Lebanon. As a bridge between east and west, both geographically and culturally, Lebanon has the fastest growing older adult population in the Arab region, but few societal resources to address its needs. In a country with a history of political instability and war, but also a culture with strong family values, aging adults in...

We examined the effects of aging on performance in an item-recognition experiment with confidence judgments. A model for confidence judgments and response time (RTs; Ratcliff & Starns, 2013) was used to fit a large amount of data from a new sample of older adults and a previously reported sample of younger adults. This model of confidence judgments allows us to distinguish between changes evide...

Human walking is highly adaptable, which allows us to walk under different circumstances. With aging, the probability of falling increases, which may partially be due to a decreased ability of older adults to adapt the gait pattern to the needs of the environment. The literature on visuomotor adaptations during reaching suggests, however, that older adults have little problems in adapting their...