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fMRI of Prose Comprehension in High- and Low-Performing Older Adults
dc.contributor.advisor | Johnson, David | |
dc.contributor.author | Wang, Clarice | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2015-12-11T23:58:19Z | |
dc.date.available | 2015-12-11T23:58:19Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2015-08-31 | |
dc.date.submitted | 2015 | |
dc.identifier.other | http://dissertations.umi.com/ku:13565 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1808/19193 | |
dc.description.abstract | Characterization and clinical detection of early Alzheimer's disease is difficult due to significant neurocognitive variability present in both healthy and pathological aging. This poses a problem for memory and aging studies because individuals categorized as healthy may actually have an early or `preclinical' AD, which may contaminate results. This study addressed these concerns by 1) using a novel prose recall task designed to elicit subtle changes in episodic memory that occur in early AD 2) examining neural activity of high- and low-performing older adults to reduce within-group variability and differentiate healthy from pathological brain activity. The prose recall task was extremely sensitive (81.8% sensitivity and 100% specificity for mean expository and narrative recall; 100% sensitivity and 100% specificity for expository stories alone) in differentiating healthy older adults from those with very mild AD. fMRI results showed evidence that high-performers retain the ability to recruit specialized regions of the brain during encoding of prose, while low-performers overrecruit nonspecific areas and strongly resemble adults with very mild AD. This suggests that high-performers engage in compensatory brain activity which may reflect a healthy aging process, while low-performers exhibit signs of dedifferentiation which may reflect a disease process. | |
dc.format.extent | 91 pages | |
dc.language.iso | en | |
dc.publisher | University of Kansas | |
dc.rights | Copyright held by the author. | |
dc.subject | Clinical psychology | |
dc.subject | Psychology | |
dc.subject | Neurosciences | |
dc.subject | aging | |
dc.subject | Alzheimer's Disease | |
dc.subject | compensation | |
dc.subject | dedifferentiation | |
dc.subject | fMRI | |
dc.subject | prose | |
dc.title | fMRI of Prose Comprehension in High- and Low-Performing Older Adults | |
dc.type | Dissertation | |
dc.contributor.cmtemember | Atchley, Ruth Ann | |
dc.contributor.cmtemember | Denney, Douglas | |
dc.contributor.cmtemember | Fiorentino, Robert | |
dc.contributor.cmtemember | Vidoni, Eric | |
dc.thesis.degreeDiscipline | Psychology | |
dc.thesis.degreeLevel | Ph.D. | |
dc.rights.accessrights | openAccess |
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Dissertations [4889]
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Psychology Dissertations and Theses [459]