Search

Long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LCPUFA) are important for brain development and function, maybe especially during adolescence. Observational studies have demonstrated an association between fish consumption (a source of LCPUFA) and cognition in adolescents, but intervention trials are lacking. The goal of the current study was to investigate the effect of one year of krill oil (a source of LCPUFA) supplementation on the cognitive performance of adolescents with a low Omega-3 Index (O3I &le, 5%). A double-blind, randomized, and placebo-controlled supplementation trial with repeated measurements (baseline (T0), three months (T1), six months (T2), and 12 months (T3)) in adolescents (267 randomized) was executed. Participants were randomized to 400 mg eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) per day in Cohort I or placebo and 800 mg EPA + DHA per day in Cohort II or placebo. O3I was monitored by a finger prick at all time points. At T0, T2, and T3, participants executed a neurocognitive test battery. Covariate corrected mixed models were run with either condition (krill or placebo) or O3I as predictors. Krill oil supplementation led to a small but significant increase in mean O3I, but few participants increased to the intended O3I range (8&ndash, 11%). There was no significant effect of supplementation on the neurocognitive tests, nor a relationship between O3I and neurocognitive test scores. The increase in O3I was small in most participants, probably due to non-compliance. Possibly the increase in O3I was too small to demonstrate an effect. More research on the influence of LCPUFAs on cognition in adolescents is needed.

This large-scale cross-sectional study had the aim to investigate whether adolescent males and females differ in self-perceived self-regulation. The large sample size allowed us to investigate sex differences in three age-groups of young (n = 161), middle (n = 133) and late (n = 159) adolescents. Self-regulation was evaluated with a self-report questionnaire, the Amsterdam Executive Functioning Inventory (AEFI). This questionnaire gives a proxi for three executive functions that are important for proper self-regulation: (1) self-control & self-monitoring, (2) attention, and (3) planning & initiative taking. Results revealed clear sex differences in the self-regulation as perceived by mid-adolescents (i.e., 13-16 years). In this age period, females evaluated their attention higher than males, and they reported higher levels of self-control & self-monitoring. Our findings offer important new insights with respect to the decision making, academic achievements and behaviour of 13-16-year olds. Self-regulation is known to have a central role in academic achievement and in behavioural organisation. The sex differences in self-regulation in mid-adolescence may therefore explain part of the difference which males and females in this age-group exhibit in academic achievements and behavioural organisations. The results imply that self-regulation may be a relevant intervention target: rather than focussing on changing behaviour, interventions may focus more on self-insights and thereby changing the adolescent's perceptions about their behaviour. Increased self-insight may have the potency to actually change behaviour, which might be an interesting target for future investigation.

Children practice their spatial skills when playing with spatial toys, such as construction materials, board games, and puzzles. Sex and SES differences are observed in the engagement in such spatial play activities at home, which relate to individual differences in spatial performance. The current study investigated the effects of explicitly providing spatial play activities in the school setting on different types of spatial ability. We presented 8- to 10-year-old children with a short and easy-to-adopt classroom intervention comprising a set of different spatial play materials. The design involved a pretest-posttest comparison between the intervention group (n = 70) and a control group without intervention (n = 70). Effects were examined on object transformation ability (i.e., a paper-and-pencil mental rotation and paper folding task) and viewer transformation ability (i.e., a hands-on 3D spatial perspective-taking task). Results showed specific effects: there were no differences between the intervention and control group in progress on the two object transformation tasks. Substantial improvements were found for the intervention group compared to the control group on the viewer transformation task. Training progress was not related to sex and socioeconomic background of the child. These findings support the value of spatial play in the classroom for the spatial development of children between 8 and 10 years of age. (PsycINFO Database Record

Objectives: The purpose of the present study was to determine whether pain is associated with specific aspects of academic performance, that is, poorer grades, and with factors critical to an adolescent's academic performance, that is, decreased emotional well-being and attention problems. We hypothesized that the association between pain and school grades is mediated by emotional well-being and attention problems. Methods: In a cross-sectional study, we collected data from 2215 pupils, ages 12 to 13 years. Pain (no, occasional, and frequent), emotional well-being, and attention problems were measured with self-rating scales. Dutch, English, and math grades were taken as an index of academic performance. Results: Frequent pain in adolescents was associated with poorer grades (Dutch P=0.02 and math P=0.01). Both occasional and frequent pain were associated with reduced emotional well-being (P

The current study investigated development and strategy use of spatial perspective taking (i.e., the ability to represent how an object or array of objects looks from other viewpoints) in children between 8 and 12years of age. We examined this ability with a task requiring children to navigate a route through a model city of wooden blocks from a 90° and 180° rotated perspective. We tested two hypotheses. First, we hypothesized that children's perspective-taking skills increase during this age period and that this process is related to a co-occurring increase in working memory capacity. Results indeed showed clear age effects; accuracy and speed of perspective-taking performance were higher in the older age groups. Positive associations between perspective-taking performance and working memory were observed. Second, we hypothesized that children, like adults, use a mental self-rotation strategy during spatial perspective taking. To confirm this hypothesis, children's performance should be better in the 90° condition than in the 180° condition of the task. Overall, the results did show the reversed pattern; children were less accurate, were slower, and committed more egocentric errors in the 90° condition than in the 180° condition. These findings support an alternative scenario in which children employ different strategies for different rotation angles. We propose that children mentally rotated their egocentric reference frame for 90° rotations; for the 180° rotations, they inverted the left-right and front-back axes without rotating their mental position.

ObjectiveTo summarise the current evidence on the effects of physical activity (PA) interventions on cognitive and academic performance in children, and formulate research priorities and recommendations.DesignSystematic review (following PRISMA guidelines) with a methodological quality assessment and an international expert panel. We based the evaluation of the consistency of the scientific evidence on the findings reported in studies rated as of high methodological quality.Data sourcesPubMed, PsycINFO, Cochrane Central, Web of Science, ERIC, and SPORTDiscus.Eligibility criteria for selecting studiesPA-intervention studies in children with at least one cognitive or academic performance assessment.ResultsEleven (19%) of 58 included intervention studies received a high-quality rating for methodological quality: four assessed effects of PA interventions on cognitive performance, six assessed effects on academic performance, and one on both. All high-quality studies contrasted the effects of additional/adapted PA activities with regular curriculum activities. For cognitive performance 10 of 21 (48%) constructs analysed showed statistically significant beneficial intervention effects of PA, while for academic performance, 15 of 25 (60%) analyses found a significant beneficial effect of PA. Across all five studies assessing PA effects on mathematics, beneficial effects were reported in six out of seven (86%) outcomes. Experts put forward 46 research questions. The most pressing research priority cluster concerned the causality of the relationship between PA and cognitive/academic performance. The remaining clusters pertained to PA characteristics, moderators and mechanisms governing the ‘PA–performance’ relationship and miscellaneous topics.ConclusionThere is currently inconclusive evidence for the beneficial effects of PA interventions on cognitive and overall academic performance in children. We conclude that there is strong evidence for beneficial effects of PA on maths performance.The expert panel confirmed that more ‘high-quality’ research is warranted. By prioritising the most important research questions and formulating recommendations we aim to guide researchers in generating high-quality evidence. Our recommendations focus on adequate control groups and sample size, the use of valid and reliable measurement instruments for physical activity and cognitive performance, measurement of compliance and data analysis.PROSPERO registration numberCRD42017082505.

This study evaluates boy-girl differences in 3D mental rotation in schoolchildren aged 7-12 years and the relation to arithmetic performance. A dedicated new task was developed: The Mental Rotation Task - Children (MRT-C). This task was applied to a large sample of 729 children. At the age of 7- to 9-years, a sex difference was found in the number of correct judgments made on the MRT-C. Boys performed better than girls. A closer look at the distribution of boys and girls in this age group showed that boys were overrepresented in the top performance quartile, whereas girls were overrepresented in the lowest performance quartile. A second finding was that higher mental rotation performance was significantly correlated to better mathematical achievement. This finding was done for boys, but not for girls. This correlation underscores the important role that spatial processing plays in mathematical achievement and has implications for school practice.

Understanding social-cognitive factors that determine school performance could contribute to educational innovations. Social interaction, collaboration and the motivation to learn are important aspects of present-day education. Social-cognitive development can therefore be expected to impact school performance. This was evaluated in the present longitudinal study. The social-cognitive variables mindreading, social value orientation, empathizing and systemizing were measured for three consecutive years in 89 secondary school students (52% girls, Mage at T1=12.9 years). These measures were then related to their school grades for the courses Dutch (native language), English (foreign language) and mathematics in the following year. The results showed that mindreading was a significant predictor for Dutch and English grades. Empathizing was a significant predictor for English grades. Mindreading remained a significant predictor for Dutch grade when controlling for Dutch grade at the time of measurement. These findings underscore the notion that social-cognitive development is important for school performance.

Studies of adults provide evidence that spatial reasoning is non-unitary in nature, consisting of separate object transformation and viewer transformation abilities. This research examined the presence of this dissociation in children. Participants between 8 and 12 years of age, divided over three age groups (i.e., 65 children from 7.5 to 9 years old, 75 children from 9 to 10.5 years old, and 77 children from 10.5 to 12 years old) performed a battery of object and viewer transformation tasks. Analysis of variance showed that performance improved with age on the individual object and viewer transformation tasks, with the largest effects between 10.5 and 12 years of age. Multi-group confirmatory factor analyses to test the dissociation of object and viewer transformation ability over the different age groups revealed that in children under 10.5 years of age object and viewer transformation ability could not be differentiated. A dissociation between object and viewer transformation ability was shown between 10.5 and 12 years of age. This period of specialization of spatial abilities may be a particularly interesting time window for identifying spatial talents and providing spatial training and intervention.

Trust plays an integral role in daily interactions within adolescents' social environment. Using a trust game paradigm, this study investigated the modulating influence of social information about three interaction partners on trust behaviour in adolescents aged 12–18 ( N = 845). After receiving information about their interaction partners prior to the task, participants were most likely to share with a 'good' partner and rate this partner as most trustworthy. Over the course of the task all interaction partners showed similar levels of trustworthy behaviour, but overall participants continued to trust and view the good partner as more trustworthy than 'bad' and 'neutral' partners throughout the game. However, with age the ability to overcome prior social information and adapt trust behaviour improved: middle and late adolescents showed a larger decrease in trust of the good partner than early adolescents, and late adolescents were more likely to reward trustworthy behaviour from the negative partner.

This study investigated whether academic achievement was predicted by the goal which generally drives a student’s learning behaviour. Secondly, the role of metacognitive self-regulation was examined. The dominant goal orientation was assessed using a new method. 735 adolescents aged 10-19 years read vignettes of students that reflect four goal orientations. Participants indicated which student they resembled most, which revealed their dominant goal orientation. Age, sex and level of parental education were controlled for. Results showed that students with motivation goals of the mastery and performance-approach types obtained higher grades than students characterized by the performance-avoidance and work-avoidance goal type. A mediation analysis showed that goal orientations predicted achievement through the level of metacognitive self-regulation. Intrinsically motivated students showed the best metacognitive self-regulation skills of all students, whereas work-avoidant students had the lowest level of self-regulation skills. The scores of students with performance goals fell in-between. The research showed that the higher grades obtained by performance-approach students, compared to performance-avoidant and work-avoidant students, can partially be explained by their higher levels of metacognitive self-regulation. Thus, goal orientation predicted achievement differences through metacognitive self-regulation skills. This suggests that intrinsic motivation and self-regulation skills should ideally be supported in the classroom. Furthermore, it suggests that teachers could use vignettes to distinguish different types of students in order to identify students who are vulnerable to lower academic achievement.

Introduction: Dorsal pathway dysfunctions are thought to underlie visuospatial processing problems in Alzheimer disease (AD). Prior studies reported compensatory mechanisms in the dorsal or ventral pathway in response to these functional changes. Since functional and structural connectivity are interrelated, these functional changes could be interpreted as a disconnection between both pathways. To better understand functional alterations in the dorsal pathway, we combined functional imaging with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a likely prodromal stage of AD. Methods: Eighteen older male individuals with amnestic MCI (aMCI) and 18 male cognitively healthy individuals, matched for age (range 59-75 years) and education, performed an object recognition task in the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanner. Neural activation was measured during recognition of non-canonically versus canonically oriented objects. Regions showing activation differences between groups were also investigated by DTI. Results: Recognition of non-canonical objects elicited increased frontal, temporal and parietal activation. Combining the functional MRI (fMRI) with the DTI results showed less deactivation in areas with decreased diffusion (mediolateral parietal and orbitofrontal) and increased activation in areas with increased diffusion (parietal and temporal) in aMCI patients. Finally, in aMCI patients decreased diffusion was found in the hippocampal cingulum, connecting both pathways. Conclusions: Our results showed increased activation in early AD patients in ventral and dorsal pathways. A decrease in deactivation and diffusion suggests functional reorganization, while increased activation and diffusion suggests compensatory processes. This is the first study showing structural evidence for functional reorganization, which may be related to connectivity loss in the cingulum. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

MRI participation has been shown to induce subjective and neuroendocrine stress reactions. A recent aging study showed that cortisol levels during fMRI have an age-dependent effect on cognitive performance and brain functioning. The present study examined whether this age-specific influence of cortisol on behavioral and brain activation levels also applies to adolescence. Salivary cortisol as well as subjective experienced anxiety were assessed during the practice session, at home, and before, during and after the fMRI session in young versus old male adolescents. Cortisol levels were enhanced pre-imaging relative to during and post-imaging in both age groups, suggesting anticipatory stress and anxiety. Overall, a negative correlation was found between cortisol output during the fMRI experiment and brain activation magnitude during performance of a gambling task. In young but not in old adolescents, higher cortisol output was related to stronger deactivation of clusters in the anterior and posterior cingulate cortex. In old but not in young adolescents, a negative correlation was found between cortisol and activation in the inferior parietal and in the superior frontal cortex. In sum, cortisol increased the deactivation of several brain areas, although the location of the affected areas in the brain was age-dependent. The present findings suggest that cortisol output during fMRI should be considered as confounder and integrated in analyzing developmental changes in brain activation during adolescence.

This cross-sectional survey study examined the relation between mental imagery (i.e., seeing images of a story ‘in the mind’ se ye’) and perceived selfcompetence in reading. The study was conducted with a group of seventh-grade to ninth-grade students in the prevocational educational track of secondary schools in the Netherlands and their parents. Results showed a moderate relation between mental imagery and self-competence beliefs, also after controlling for the quality of students’ home literacy environment. Examination of gender differences revealed that girls outperformed boys in self-competence beliefs. Furthermore, boys perceived themselves as better readers when their parents had higher mental imagery skills. No direct relation was found between parents’ and adolescents’ mental imagery skills. These findings imply that parents and teachers may need to be made aware of the importance of mental imagery strategies as it may enhance the reading experiences of boys as well as girls.

This study investigates whether children’s verbal reports accurately represent their thinking processes when solving simple multiplication problems. A total of 106 third graders in Dutch mainstream primary schools solved simple multiplication problems and retrospectively reported how they had done this. The degree to which verbal reports predict children’s problem-solving performance in ways that correspond to known patterns of response latency, accuracy, errors and strategy choice was assessed. The analyses took account of relevant problem characteristics and child cognitive characteristics (i.e., math ability, verbal ability, phonological decoding speed) known to affect the relation between strategy use and multiplication performance. The verbal reports were largely consistent with known patterns, supporting the use of verbal reports in assessing multiplication strategy use. Moreover, verbal reports provide valuable information that can alert teachers and educational researchers to specific issues that students face when solving simple multiplication problems. Considerations for soliciting reliable verbal reports are suggested.

In countries with high differentiation between academic and vocational education, an individual's future prospects are strongly determined by the educational track to which he or she is assigned. This large-scale, cross-sectional study focuses on low-performing students in academic tracks who face being moved to a vocational track. If more is understood about these students, measures could be taken to improve their performance and keep them within academic education. The study investigates performance patterns in academic tracks in the first three years of secondary school in the Netherlands. By identifying patterns that reveal how competence levels in different domains are related at different stages of development and by comparing low performers with other students, the study sheds light on individual and educational aspects that may be amenable to intervention. School grades were analysed for 1596 students. School performance was found to reflect three domains - languages (language of schooling and modern foreign languages), social studies and science and math - that appear to interact in a process of co-construction. General language skills were robustly related to performance in other domains - particularly social studies - throughout the first three years of secondary school. By comparison, proficiency specifically in the language of schooling was less strongly related to social studies and science and math performance after the first year. Suggestions are given as to how educators and curriculum developers could use these insights to accommodate individual and developmental differences and to develop learning materials that may help low performers keep on track.

The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between teacher perceptions and children's reading motivation, with specific attention to gender differences. The reading self-concept, task value, and attitude of 160 fifth and sixth graders were measured. Teachers rated each student's reading comprehension. Results showed that for boys, teacher expectations had no influence on the three constructs of reading motivation measured, whereas for girls, teacher expectations did predict reading self-concept and value of reading. The results provide evidence that the relationship between motivational factors and teacher perceptions is different for boys and girls. The implications for educational practice are addressed.

Objective: This article describes a controlled, neuropsychological intervention study in adult ADHD. We examined whether adults with ADHD would benefit from a structured course based on Goal Management Training (GMT). The comprehensive course also included psycho-education on the important aspects of executive functioning as well as counseling with respect to coping behaviors. Method: The intervention group was compared with a control group of patients who received psycho-education only (n 12 and n 15, respectively). The effects of the intervention were evaluated using subjective and objective test measures. In addition, a structured preassessment, an evaluation, and a group comparison were carried out by an experienced clinician, who was blinded to the intervention itself. Results: The results of the structured clinical interview obtained in the active intervention group were significantly better in the intervention group than those of the control group. Conclusion: The findings suggest that the combination of GMT with psycho- education and counseling may have validity for adults with ADHD. (J. of Att. Dis. 2012; XX(X) 1-XX)

Previous studies have indicated that patients with mild head injury have no specific deficits in selective attention as assessed with the Stroop Color Word Test. It has been reported that patients may be slower to name colors, but that they are not disproportionately slower on the subtask with color-word interference. The present study examined whether the performance of patients with mild head injury (MHI) was worse than that of nonconcussed controls on a modified Stroop interference subtask of increased complexity. Patients (n=44) were individually matched with controls for age, sex, and education. It was found that MHI patients were significantly slower on this modified subtask, whereas there was no significant difference between the two groups with the original interference subtask. The findings support the hypothesis that the cognitive disturbances of patients with mild head injury may be subtle and only demonstrable with very sensitive tests.

School is an ideal setting to promote and increase physical activity (PA) in children. However, implementation of school-based PA programmes seems difficult, in particular due to schools’ focus on academic performance and a lack of involvement of school staff in program development. The potential cognitive and academic benefits of PA might increase chances of successful implementation. Therefore, the aim of this qualitative study was: (1) to explore the perceptions of teachers and principals with regard to implementation of additional PA aimed at improving cognitive and academic performance, and (2) to identify characteristics of PA programmes that according to them are feasible in daily school practice. Twenty-six face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted with primary school teachers (grades 5 and 6) and principals in The Netherlands, and analysed using inductive content analysis. Teachers and principals expressed their willingness to implement additional PA if it benefits learning. Time constraints appeared to be a major barrier, and strongly influenced participants’ perceptions of feasible PA programmes. Teachers and principals emphasised that additional PA needs to be short, executed in the classroom, and provided in “ready-to-use” materials, i.e., that require no or little preparation time (e.g., a movie clip). Future research is needed to strengthen the evidence on the effects of PA for academic purposes, and should examine the forms of PA that are both effective as well as feasible in the school setting.

Late adolescents and emerging adults often report lower sleep quality. Recent studies have shown that many of these individuals are also characterized by ongoing development of executive functions, such as self-control and self-monitoring. These functions are not fully mature until later in the twenties. As both suboptimal sleep and improper executive functions can impact academic performance, there could be a relationship between these processes. However, few studies have examined these relationships simultaneously to more fully understand the effects of sleep on academic performance in higher education. The aim of the present study was therefore to investigate the extent to which sleep quality influences study success in higher education, and to what extent self-perceived executive function influences this possible relationship. A large survey was conducted among 1760 first-year students at a University of Applied Sciences to evaluate this aim. Results showed that sleep quality and study success are related: lower self-reported sleep quality is related to less study success. A high level of self-control and self-monitoring appears to compensate for the negative effect which sleeping problems have on obtaining study credits. The results of this large-scale study emphasize the need to include sleep and skills in self-control when planning educational innovations aimed at fostering study success in higher education.

Executive functions (EFs) develop over the period of early childhood and adolescence up until young adulthood. Individual children differ substantially in the pace at which their EFs develop, and characteristics such as sex and the level of parental education (LPE) are thought to contribute to these differences. In the present study, we assessed age-related changes in EFs as perceived and evaluated by teachers and parents as well as the influence of sex and LPE on their evaluations. We used a newly developed observer-report questionnaire, the Amsterdam Executive Function Inventory (AEFI). The AEFI assesses three important components of the executive aspects of daily life behavior in 13 questions: Attention; Self-control and Self-monitoring; and Planning and Initiative taking. Teachers and parents evaluated these aspects of executive functioning in 186 schoolchildren in grades 3-6 (age: 9-12 years). Age effects within grades and differences in social economic status between the four participating schools were controlled. Results showed a significant increase in teacher-perceived EFs from third to fourth grades and from fifth to sixth grades. This development was influenced both by the sex of the child and by the LPE. As perceived by teachers, the component self-control and self-monitoring was higher for girls than for boys, and planning abilities were higher for children from families with a higher LPE. Additional analyses showed that there is a systematic and statistically significant difference between the evaluations of the teachers and that of parents. Parents reported higher scores for planning, whereas teachers reported higher scores for self-control and self-monitoring. Evaluations by parents and teachers were different for girls, but not for boys. These findings are important because they imply that the development of EFs as perceived by parents and teachers is influenced by child-related factors. Second, there are clear differences in evaluations between teachers and parents. The AEFI appears to be a tool that is easily used by parents and teachers and shows potential for monitoring the development of EFs as perceived by significant others during young adolescence.

Objective: Multi-trial memory tests are widely used in research and clinical practice because they allow for assessing different aspects of memory and learning in a single comprehensive test procedure. However, the use of multi-trial memory tests also raises some key data analysis issues. Indeed, the different trial scores are typically all correlated, and this correlation has to be properly accounted for in the statistical analyses. In the present paper, the focus is on the setting where normative data have to be established for multi-trial memory tests. At present, normative data for such tests are typically based on a series of univariate analyses, i.e. a statistical model is fitted for each of the test scores separately. This approach is suboptimal because (1) the correlated nature of the data is not accounted for, (2) multiple testing issues may arise, and (3) the analysis is not parsimonious. Method and results: Here, a normative approach that is not hampered by these issues is proposed (the so-called multivariate regression-based approach). The methodology is exemplified in a sample of N = 221 Dutch-speaking children (aged between 5.82 and 15.49 years) who were administered Rey’s Auditory Verbal Learning Test. An online Appendix that details how the analyses can be conducted in practice (using the R software) is also provided. Conclusion: The multivariate normative regression-based approach has some substantial methodological advantages over univariate regression-based methods. In addition, the method allows for testing substantive hypotheses that cannot be addressed in a univariate framework (e.g. trial by covariate interactions can be modeled).

Developing fluency in arithmetic facts is instrumental to mathematics learning. This study compares the effects of two practice conditions on children’s fluency in simple multiplication facts. Third and fourth graders in the Netherlands (N = 282) practised in either a conventional recall condition where they produced answers to problems, or a choice condition where they had to choose between competing answers that included common multiplication errors. Practice in the choice condition was faster and as accurate as recall practice but was not more beneficial to performance on speed tests of practised facts. For more experienced students, recall practice led to greater improvement on a conventional recall fluency test. Differential effects of practice conditions on test performance are explained in terms of practice-to-test transfer demands. The relative merits of recall and choice tasks in multiplication fact learning are discussed.

A B S T R A C T This study examined the role of visual representation type, spatial ability, and reading comprehension in word problem solving in 128 sixth-grade students by using primarily an item-level approach rather than a test-level approach. We revealed that compared to students who did not make a visual representation, those who produced an accurate visual-schematic representation increased the chance of solving a word problem correctly almost six times. Inaccurate visual-schematic and pictorial representations, on the other hand, decreased students’ chance of problem solving success. Noteworthy, reading comprehension was related to word problem solving at the test-level but not at the itemlevel. In interpreting the results, we advocate the use of item-level analyses since they are able to disclose such level-of-analysis discrepancies. 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

We examined the effects of aging and cognitive fatigue on working memory (WM) related brain activation using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Age-related differences were investigated in 13 young and 16 middle-aged male school teachers. Cognitive fatigue was induced by sustained performance on cognitively demanding tasks (compared to a control condition). Results showed a main effect of age on left dorsolateral prefrontal and superior parietal cortex activation during WM encoding; greater activation was evident in middle-aged than young adults regardless of WM load or fatigue condition. An interaction effect was found in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC); WM load-dependent activation was elevated in middle-aged compared to young in the control condition, but did not differ in the fatigue condition due to a reduction in activation in middle-aged in contrast to an increase in activation in the young group. These findings demonstrate age-related activation differences and differential effects of fatigue on activation in young and middle-aged adults. © 2013 Elsevier B.V.

The transition from late adolescence to young adulthood is marked by anatomical maturation of various brain regions. In parallel, defining life changes take place, such as entrance into college. Up till now research has not focused on functional brain differences during this particular developmental stage. The current cross-sectional fMRI study investigates age differences in cognitive control by comparing late adolescents, 18-19 years old, with young adults, 23-25 years old. Seventy-four male and female medical students carried out a combined cognitive and emotional Stroop task. Overall, lateral frontoparietal and medial parietal activation was observed during cognitive interference resolution. Young adults showed stronger activation in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, left inferior frontal gyrus, left middle temporal gyrus and middle cingulate, compared to late adolescents. During emotional interference resolution, the left precentral and postcentral gyrus were involved across age and sex. The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and precuneus were activated more in young adults than in late adolescents. No sex-related differences were found in this homogeneous sample. The results suggest that the neural bases of cognitive control continue to change between late adolescence and young adulthood. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.

Background: Gray matter atrophy, an important biomarker for early Alzheimer's disease, might be due to white matter changes within gray matter. Methods: Twenty older participants with significant memory decline over a 12-year period (T12) were matched to 20 nondeclining participants. All participants were magnetic resonance imaging scanned at T12. Cortical thickness and diffusion tensor imaging analyses were performed. Results: Lower cortical thickness values were associated with lower diffusion values in frontal and parietal gray matter areas. This association was only present in the memory decline group. The cortical thickness diffusion tensor imaging correlations showed significant group differences in the posterior cingulate gyrus, precuneus, and superior frontal gyrus. Conclusions: Decreased gray matter diffusivity in the posterior cingulate/precuneus area might be a disease-specific process and a potential new biomarker for early Alzheimer's disease. Future studies should validate its potential as a biomarker and focus on cellular changes underlying diffusivity changes in gray matter. (C) 2013 The Alzheimer's Association. All rights reserved.

This study examines inter-individual differences in how presentation modality affects verbal learning performance. Children aged 5 to 16 performed a verbal learning test within one of three presentation modalities: pictorial, auditory, or textual. The results indicated that a beneficial effect of pictures exists over auditory and textual presentation modalities and that this effect increases with age. However, this effect is only found if the information to be learned is presented once (or at most twice) and only in children above the age of 7. The results may be explained in terms of single or dual coding of information in which the phonological loop is involved. Development of the (sub)vocal rehearsal system in the phonological loop is believed to be a gradual process that begins developing around the age of 7. The developmental trajectories are similar for boys and girls. Additionally, auditory information and textual information both seemed to be processed in a similar manner, namely without labeling or recoding, leading to single coding. In contrast, pictures are assumed to be processed by the dual coding of both the visual information and a (verbal) labeling of the pictures.

Recent studies indicate that a single bout of physical exercise can have immediate positive effects on cognitive performance of children and adolescents. However, the type of exercise that affects cognitive performance the most in young adolescents is not fully understood. Therefore, this controlled study examined the acute effects of three types of 12-minute classroom-based exercise sessions on information processing speed and selective attention. The three conditions consisted of aerobic, coordination and strength exercises respectively. In particular, this study focused on the feasibility and efficiency of introducing short bouts of exercise in the classroom. One hundred and ninety five students (5th and 6th grade; 10-13 years old) participated in a double baseline within-subjects design, with students acting as their own control. Exercise type was randomly assigned to each class and acted as between-subject factor. Before and immediately after both the control and the exercise session, students performed two cognitive tests that measured information processing speed (Letter Digit Substitution Test) and selective attention (d2 Test of Attention). The results revealed that exercising at low to moderate intensity does not have an effect on the cognitive parameters tested in young adolescents. Furthermore, there were no differential effects of exercise type. The results of this study are discussed in terms of the caution which should be taken when conducting exercise sessions in a classroom setting aimed at improving cognitive performance.