The Human Brain A Strong Association Between Age Change...

As humans begin to get older, there is a strong association between age change and the decline of cognition. There are many causes of this decline, and it often varies highly between individuals based on their lifestyle and physical activity level (Brown AK, Liu-Ambrose T, Tate R, Lord SR, 2009). This a concern that many individuals have as they start to get older, especially with the media coverage that Alzheimer’s disease has been getting. Degenerate diseases such as Alzheimer’s can also be a major cause of cognitive decline and are common in elderly populations. Because of this risk, there are many who are looking to improve or maintain their cognitive abilities or those of a loved one, as there is an expectation that even in old age,†¦show more content†¦The results from this training on healthy seniors will provide a basis for future applications dealing with Alzheimer’s impaired seniors. Studies to date have generally used two specific measures, ep isodic memory and executive functioning (Nouchi et al., 2014) (Weinberg, L., Hasni, A., Shinohara, M., Duarte, A., 2014) (Brown, 2009). Episodic memory and Executive functioning are important and measurable cognitive functions of the brain and can give insight into how well the brain is functioning overall (Nouchi et al., 2014). Episodic memories are autobiographical in nature and are formed with the medial temporal lobe. Executive functioning is a general term for parts of the brain that handle planning, reasoning, and most importantly, the working memory. Previous research by Nouchi et al. (2014) has shown that exercise training has the ability to improve both episodic memory and executive functioning in elderly people. Weinberg et al., (2014) built on this and demonstrated that even one session of resistance exercise will improve the episodic memory of any age group. These studies show that episodic memory and executive functioning are both measurable and changeable. However, both of them use exercise to produce a change, so it is still left to see if memory training has similar effects. I will measure these variables with a group of tests that are analyzed to provide a comparable composite