The Role of the Locus Coeruleus in Age-related Distractibility

Summary

A growing body of research has highlighted the importance of frontal regions, at both the functional and structural levels, in age-related declines in attentional and cognitive processing. However, the underlying neurobiological pathophysiological changes in the brain that contribute to these declines are still largely unclear. The objective of this proposal is to investigate neural mechanisms of age-related attentional distractibility, focusing on the neural circuit initiated from the locus coeruleus (LC). In the current proposal, the investigators will test the hypothesis that the neural disconnectivity of LC with the salience network (SN) drives failures of ignoring distractors in older adults. The investigators will examine how LC-SN connectivity is associated with selective attention performance, and how improved LC-SN connectivity through a cognitive training program may lead to improved attentional performance.

Interventions

• Tablet based adaptive multimodal attention practice program · BEHAVIORAL

  An adaptive at-home tablet-based program that includes variants of the Flanker Task, the Stroop Task, and a Visual Tracking Task. Each session of practice will include up to ten minutes with each of these task types, and the tasks will increase in difficulty in a way that further taxes attention (such as through more distractors or more incongruent trials) as participant performance improves.

• Tablet based adaptive criterion task practice program · BEHAVIORAL

  An adaptive, at-home tablet-based variant of the criterion task, that is, the selective attention/distraction task used during the scanning portion of the human participant portions of the study, that takes up to 25 minutes to complete each session.

Published eligibility criteria

Verbatim from the registry. Only the site can decide how these apply to a specific patient.

Inclusion:

* Healthy adult participants
* No younger than 18 and no older than 75 yrs of age
* Ability to provide written informed consent

Exclusion:

* History of surgery involving metal implants
* Possible metal fragments in the eyes
* Pacemaker
* A history of claustrophobia
* Braces
* Weighing over 250 pounds
* Pregnant or possibility of being pregnant.
* Severe medical or psychiatric conditions (e.g., blind or deaf, head trauma)
* Learning disabilities or developmental disabilities

Sites (1)

• Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia · RECRUITING