For Ainara Calahorra. March 9, 2018
There are many definitions of aging, being a characteristic common to most of them to define aging as one more stage of human development, in which there is a slow and progressive involution, in the absence of disease. This involution affects physical functions (for example, motor efficiency decreases) and also cognitive functions (for example, it reduces the processing speed) but this without implying pathology or risk in the functionality of the person.
Moragas (1991), lists the common characteristics in the definitions of aging, among which are that it is intrinsic, progressive, universal, individual, declining, asynchronous, genetically programmed phenomenon and on the which different factors affect such as heredity, environmental and health factors, among others.
However, pathological old age would be one that develops in an organism with disease and normal old age that evolves without disabling pathologies. This classification is too broad, which is why within normal old age there are also those people who, although they do not suffer from a disabling disease, are at risk of suffering from it.
As Fernández-Ballesteros points out, (1998) a successful old age is one that maintains health (or absence of disease) and functional ability (absence of disability). Within this continuum, between normal and pathological aging there is “mild cognitive impairment”, as an intermediate cognitive decline.
Aging is associated with a series of changes among which is the decline in the central nervous system that brings together neurobiological changes, such as the reduction of brain weight and volume and the loss of myelin from the axons. There are also neurophysiological changes, such as slight modification of cerebral blood flow, reduction of nerve impulse and inhibitory control of external stimuli. The brain areas where the greatest decline occurs are in the temporal, frontal and parietal regions (although, as already mentioned, they do not involve pathology).
The areas that present this atrophy process are the occipital lobe and the base of the brain (Román and Sánchez, 1998). In addition, there is a decrease in the cerebral convolutions and a significant increase in the ventricles (Rentz et al., 2004). At the subcortical level, the changes that appear during aging affect the amygdala, hippocampus, basal ganglia, locus coeruleus, and substantia nigra with reduced number of neurons associated. (La Rue, 1992). Neurobiological changes lead to cognitive changes.
exist changes in attention span leading to impaired sustained attention span and distractions, however, selective attention problems generally do not appear. Regarding divided attention, during aging there is a decrease in the performance of dual tasks (Madden, 1990). In a recent study by Vázquez-Marrufo et al. (2010) where attentional networks are analyzed, it is concluded that older people show a general slowdown during attentional tasks than younger subjects.
In relation to the information processing speed, during old age, slowing usually appears. Salthouse (1991) observes that when older people carry out a complex task, there is a slowdown in the initial phases of the task that conditions reaching the final stages, so the processing speed has a more negative influence on the result of the chores. The origin of this general slowdown (although it affects more complex tasks) may be influenced by the degeneration of the white matter that is associated with age (Junque et al., 1994).
On the other hand, language is a capacity that remains preserved in general during normal aging (without forgetting that it is a variable linked to factors such as educational level). Greater lexical richness has been described as age advances, as well as syntax and compression (Hernández et al. 2007). However, the ability to find the right word and the elaboration of a complex speech, verbal fluency, can be affected. This type of deterioration is due to the decline in working memory and the slowing down of information processing, and not to a problem of language ability. Huff (1990) proposes that the involvement of nonverbal components in the tasks of verbal fluency, capacity for sustained attention, speed of processing and motor production, could explain the fact that older people have more difficulties in the execution of fluency tasks verbal.
Regarding executive functions, during aging the efficiency is lower when complex situations have to be dealt with, although the reasoning is preserved in the most habitual or day-to-day, in novel or complex situations they make more redundancy errors and perseverations. This is related to the fact that the frontal regions are the first to suffer a decline during aging. Junqué and Jurado (1994) point out that the frontal lobe has cortico-cortical and cortico-subcortical connections, the Age-related degeneration of the white matter and basal ganglia affects all these functions that depend on the frontal cortex. For example, older people have deficits in the formation of concepts, they reason in more concrete terms than younger people, they decrease the cognitive flexibility necessary to make abstractions and form associations between concepts (Román and Sánchez, 1998).
On the other hand, some studies reflect spatial deterioration associated with aging, associated with a gradual decline in skills that require time to perform. The differences between young and old adults increase significantly due to motor slowdown and the increase in reaction times (Ardila et al. 2003).
Age-related changes in memory, affect each memory system differently. On the one hand, there is a decline in the retrieval of stored information and encoding, and in the speed of processing. In addition, in working memory (associated with the executive functions already mentioned) there is deterioration of the central executive system (Craik et al. 1995). However, in immediate memory there are no significant changes compared to other younger people.
As with the rest of our body, the brain needs daily dedication and stimulation that can come from different sources (from doing a sudoku puzzle, to reading, trying to learn how to operate a new appliance, have a conversation arguing our point of view, try to memorize the shopping list or do some accounts "of head"). Keeping our brain active stimulates the different capacities that have been described. Making a parallel with sport, a person who has done some type of exercise throughout his life (we do not we refer to the exercise of a professional dedicated to sport) will preserve a healthier body in each phase of the lifetime. The same thing happens with cognitive abilities, it is never too late to start stimulating them.
This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
