Análise da eficiência de uma estratégia de codificação associativa na evocação imediata e tardia da memória contextual em idosos

• Ano de defesa: 2016
• Autor(a) principal: Beras, Letícia
• Orientador(a): Bromberg, Elke
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul
• Programa de Pós-Graduação: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Gerontologia Biomédica
• Departamento: Instituto de Geriatria e Gerontologia
• País: Brasil
• Palavras-chave em Português: COGNIÇÃO; MEMÓRIA; ENVELHECIMENTO; GERONTOLOGIA BIOMÉDICA
• Área do conhecimento CNPq: CIENCIAS DA SAUDE::MEDICINA
• Link de acesso: http://tede2.pucrs.br/tede2/handle/tede/7097

Introduction: Increased life expectancy is not necessarily accompanied by quality of life. Among the main problems that affect this quality of life are cognitive dysfunction. The literature shows that aging is related to: (1) structural, biochemical and gene expression changes in the brain, (2) functional decline of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), (3) contextual memory deficits. Objectives: To analyze the effects of an associative encoding strategy on immediate and delayed contextual memory in the healthy elderly,. Methodology: The study included 43 elderly patients (≥ 60 years). All subjects underwent neuropsychological assessment including Trail test A and B, Forward and Backwards digit span, and Stroop word, color and word/color. To analyze the spatial contextual memory volunteers were randomly divided into two groups: immediate (5min) and delayed recall (90min). Participants of each group were assigned to one of two encoding conditions: whit or without an incidental associative instruction to encourage the association of the item to its spatial context. Data were analyzed with mixed and univariate GLMs. P<0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: Performance on contextual memory was near chance in the immediate and delayed recognition without associative encoding condition. Introduction of the associative encoding instruction improved contextual memory in the immediate and delayed recognition to the same extent.Conclusion: This study suggests that the increase in contextual memory by incidental associative encoding instructions is stable for at least 90 min, reinforcing the notion that contextual memory deficits of older adults are reversible and potentially amenable to cognitive training.