iBlogging mobile post: Aging training and the brain lit review

Cindy Lustig1 , Priti Shah2, Rachael Seidler3 and Patricia A. Reuter-Lorenz1 (1)  Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1043, USA (2)  Departments of Psychology and Combined Program in Education and Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA (3)  Department of Psychology and School of Kinesiology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA Received: 12 June 2009  Accepted:12 October 2009  Published online: 30 October 2009 Abstract  As the population ages, the need for effective methods to maintain or even improve older adults' cognitive performance becomes increasingly pressing. Here we provide a brief review of the major intervention approaches that have been the focus of past research with healthy older adults (strategy training, multi-modal interventions, cardiovascular exercise, and process-based training), and new approaches that incorporate neuroimaging. As outcome measures, neuroimaging data on intervention-related changes in volume, structural integrity; and functional activation can provide important insights into the nature and duration of an intervention's effects. Perhaps even more intriguingly, several recent studies have used neuroimaging data as a guide to identify core cognitive processes that can be trained in one task with effective transfer to other tasks that share the same underlying processes. Although many open questions remain, this research has greatly increased our understanding of how to promote successful aging of cognition and the brain. Keywords  Training - fmri - Healthy aging - Brain - Neuroimaging - Cardiovascular - Cognitive intervention Cindy Lustig Email: clustig@umich.edu Fulltext Preview (Small, Large)