Class notes

Lecture summary neuropsychology of aging

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Course
Neuropsychology of Aging (500881M6)

Institution
Tilburg University (UVT)

I got an 8.5 on the final exam with my summary (lectures + articles). Consists of all the lectures: Week 1: Successful aging and neurodegenerative disorders Week 2: Brain changes Week 3: Cognition Week 4: Emotions Week 5: Physical changes Week 6: Interventions

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Uploaded on December 29, 2024
Number of pages 46
Written in 2024/2025
Type Class notes
Professor(s) Dr mark and prof brehmer
Contains All classes

introduction
emotions
brain changes
successful aging
cognition
physical changes
interventions

Institution
Tilburg University (UVT)
Education
Clinical neuropsychology
Course
Neuropsychology of Aging (500881M6)

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Neuropsychology of Aging summary articles + lectures

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1. Summary - Neuropsychology of aging summary articles
2. Class notes - Lecture summary neuropsychology of aging
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Lecture 1
Psychosocial models of successful aging:
- Life satisfaction
- Social functioning
- Psychological resources

Biomedical model of successful aging:
- Consists of three components:
1. Avoiding disease and disability
2. Engagement with life
3. High cognitive and physical function
- Usual aging vs successful aging; if you miss anything you’re not aging successfully
- Critic: lacks psychosocial aspects

Layperson’s perspective on successful aging:
- Scientific theorizing needs to reflect and be linked to reality to have societal impact and relevance

Combining models of successful aging:

- Quantitative model:
- 10% were classified as successfully aged
- Optimal overall functioning & well-being = successful aging
- Layperson model:
- Almost all rated themselves as successfully aged
- Adaption (being able to adapt) ⇒ successful aging

How to define successful cognitive/ memory aging:
- Individual differences within older adults (e.g., top tertial of a cohort)
- Comparing people to the performance of younger adults
- Successful aging as absence of longitudinal decline

,Inter-individual differences in cognition/ memory:
- Huge variance in each age group
- Huge inter-individual differences
What accounts for individual differences in the aging process:

Process-oriented models of successful aging:
- Maximization of gains while minimizing losses: improvement, maintenance, and reorientation of
goals/ goal structures when coping with major life change and loss
- Less resources (can’t do everything anymore when you get older, physical/ cognitive decline) ⇒
goals need to be readjusted to stay happy
Goals and goal structures:
- Goals organize human life development
- Lifespan changes/ losses lead to emergence, maintenance, transformation, disengagement in
specific goals
- Aging involves reductions in scope of goals
Shift balance between gains and losses:

, - Losses ⇒ synapses ⇒ increases with age
Model of selection, optimization, and compensation (SOC):

- Selection: directionality of development including selection of alternative contexts, outcomes,
and goals
- Optimization: concerns means for achieving desired outcomes and attaining higher levels of
functioning
- Compensation: activation or acquisition of new substitutive means for counteracting loss/
decline in means that threatens maintenance of a given level of functioning
- Example:
- Piano at old age:
- Less pieces (selection)
- More practice (optimization)
- Variations in contrasts in speed (compensation)

Defining successful aging is a challenge:

- Measuring success against one standard probably does not help us to understand the
heterogeneity of the aging process

, Aging:
- Normal aging defined as “what is left when disease is excluded”
- Age is number 1 variable linked to pathology in the brain
- People aged 70-90 years without vascular, metabolic or neural degeneration are “supernormal” or
“optimally aged”
- Possible that many “normal” older controls are actually in a preclinical form of neurodegeneration
- However… pathological aging in this course means: older people who have evidence of brain
neuropathology and/ or have been diagnosed with a neurological disorder

Typical neurological disorders in older people:
- The vast majority of clients visiting a neuropsychologist are 60+ years of age
- Typical neurological disorders in older people include:
1. Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias (progressive)
2. Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease and other movement disorders
3. Strokes: can actually happen at any time in the lifespan but older people appear to be especially
vulnerable
4. Head injuries
5. Epilepsy
6. Brain tumors

Specific aspects to be aware of with this population:
- Hearing
- Sight
- Movement and other disabilities
- May get tired faster than younger clients
- Some researchers (not all/ be wary of stereotypes) have found increased incidence of depression
in older populations and this may hamper assessment

Special populations:
- Not everyone can perform adequately on standard neuropsychological tests:
- People with visual, auditory, and motor problems
- The severely handicapped patient
- The severely brain damaged patient
- Older persons (majority of clients) and young children
- When there is a language problem
- Cultural factors

Normal or pathological aging:
- Steps normally taken in the clinic:
- Interview with client and partner/ family member
- Asking about change (remote and recent)
- Asking about medical history (anything which could explain the self-reported changes)
- Determining baseline (premorbid level)
- Comprehensive neuropsychological testing - are the self-reported complaints (SCC)
supported by the objective cognitive performance (OCP)?
- Performance compared to age-matched norms
- Scans, blood tests, multidisciplinary team
- Diagnosis of neurological/ neuropsychological disorders typically follows published/
established guidelines (e.g., DSM, IC-10 etc.) many hospitals have their own preferences

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