TY - JOUR A1 - Reifegerste, Jana A1 - Jarvis, Rebecca A1 - Felser, Claudia T1 - Effects of chronological age on native and nonnative sentence processing BT - evidence from subject-verb agreement in German JF - Journal of memory and language N2 - While much attention has been devoted to the cognition of aging multilingual individuals, little is known about how age affects their grammatical processing. We assessed subject-verb number-agreement processing in sixty native (L1) and sixty non-native (L2) speakers of German (age: 18-84) using a binary-choice sentence-completion task, along with various individual-differences tests. Our results revealed differential effects of age on L1 and L2 speakers' accuracy and reaction times (RTs). L1 speakers' RTs increased with age, and they became more susceptible to attraction errors. In contrast, L2 speakers' RTs decreased, once age-related slowing was controlled for, and their overall accuracy increased. We interpret this as resulting from increased L2 exposure. Moreover, L2 speakers' accuracy/RT patterns were more strongly affected by cognitive variables (working memory, interference control) than L1 speakers'. Our findings show that as regards bilinguals' grammatical processing ability, aging is associated with both gains (in experience) and losses (in cognitive abilities). KW - sentence processing KW - subject-verb agreement KW - attraction errors KW - second-language processing KW - aging Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2019.104083 SN - 0749-596X SN - 1096-0821 VL - 111 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam [u.a.] ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Fuchs, Susanne A1 - Koenig, Laura L. A1 - Gerstenberg, Annette T1 - A longitudinal study of speech acoustics in older French females BT - analysis of the filler particle euh across utterance positions JF - Languages : open access journal N2 - Aging in speech production is a multidimensional process. Biological, cognitive, social, and communicative factors can change over time, stay relatively stable, or may even compensate for each other. In this longitudinal work, we focus on stability and change at the laryngeal and supralaryngeal levels in the discourse particle euh produced by 10 older French-speaking females at two times, 10 years apart. Recognizing the multiple discourse roles of euh, we divided out occurrences according to utterance position. We quantified the frequency of euh, and evaluated acoustic changes in formants, fundamental frequency, and voice quality across time and utterance position. Results showed that euh frequency was stable with age. The only acoustic measure that revealed an age effect was harmonics-to-noise ratio, showing less noise at older ages. Other measures mostly varied with utterance position, sometimes in interaction with age. Some voice quality changes could reflect laryngeal adjustments that provide for airflow conservation utterance-finally. The data suggest that aging effects may be evident in some prosodic positions (e.g., utterance-final position), but not others (utterance-initial position). Thus, it is essential to consider the interactions among these factors in future work and not assume that vocal aging is evident throughout the signal. KW - aging KW - prosody KW - voice quality KW - fundamental frequency KW - formants KW - filler KW - particles Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/languages6040211 SN - 2226-471X VL - 6 IS - 4 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Kehm, Richard A1 - Jähnert, Markus A1 - Deubel, Stefanie A1 - Flore, Tanina A1 - König, Jeannette A1 - Jung, Tobias A1 - Stadion, Mandy A1 - Jonas, Wenke A1 - Schürmann, Annette A1 - Grune, Tilman A1 - Höhn, Annika T1 - Redox homeostasis and cell cycle activation mediate beta-cell mass expansion in aged, diabetes-prone mice under metabolic stress conditions: role of thioredoxin-interacting protein (TXNIP) JF - Redox Biology N2 - Overnutrition contributes to insulin resistance, obesity and metabolic stress, initiating a loss of functional beta-cells and diabetes development. Whether these damaging effects are amplified in advanced age is barely investigated. Therefore, New Zealand Obese (NZO) mice, a well-established model for the investigation of human obesity-associated type 2 diabetes, were fed a metabolically challenging diet with a high-fat, carbohydrate restricted period followed by a carbohydrate intervention in young as well as advanced age. Interestingly, while young NZO mice developed massive hyperglycemia in response to carbohydrate feeding, leading to beta-cell dysfunction and cell death, aged counterparts compensated the increased insulin demand by persistent beta-cell function and beta-cell mass expansion. Beta-cell loss in young NZO islets was linked to increased expression of thioredoxin-interacting protein (TXNIP), presumably initiating an apoptosis-signaling cascade via caspase-3 activation. In contrast, islets of aged NZOs exhibited a sustained redox balance without changes in TXNIP expression, associated with higher proliferative potential by cell cycle activation. These findings support the relevance of a maintained proliferative potential and redox homeostasis for preserving islet functionality under metabolic stress, with the peculiarity that this adaptive response emerged with advanced age in diabetesprone NZO mice. KW - aging KW - redox homeostasis KW - metabolic stress KW - beta-cells KW - cell cycle KW - thioredoxin-interacting protein Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.redox.2020.101748 SN - 2213-2317 VL - 37 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Reifegerste, Jana T1 - The effects of aging on bilingual language BT - what changes, what doesn't, and why JF - Bilingualism : language and cognition N2 - Substantial research has examined cognition in aging bilinguals. However, less work has investigated the effects of aging on language itself in bilingualism. In this article I comprehensively review prior research on this topic, and interpret the evidence in light of current theories of aging and theories of bilingualism. First, aging indeed appears to affect bilinguals' language performance, though there is considerable variability in the trajectory across adulthood (declines, age-invariance, and improvements) and in the extent to which these trajectories resemble those found in monolinguals. I argue that these age effects are likely explained by the key opposing forces of increasing experience and cognitive declines in aging. Second, consistent with some theoretical work on bilingual language processing, the grammatical processing mechanisms do not seem to change between younger and older bilingual adults, even after decades of immersion. I conclude by discussing how future research can further advance the field. KW - aging KW - bilingualism KW - second language KW - lexical processing KW - grammatical KW - processing Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728920000413 SN - 1366-7289 SN - 1469-1841 VL - 24 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 17 PB - Cambridge Univ. Press CY - Cambridge ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Koenig, Julian A1 - Abler, Birgit A1 - Agartz, Ingrid A1 - akerstedt, Torbjorn A1 - Andreassen, Ole A. A1 - Anthony, Mia A1 - Baer, Karl-Juergen A1 - Bertsch, Katja A1 - Brown, Rebecca C. A1 - Brunner, Romuald A1 - Carnevali, Luca A1 - Critchley, Hugo D. A1 - Cullen, Kathryn R. A1 - de Geus, Eco J. C. A1 - de la Cruz, Feliberto A1 - Dziobek, Isabel A1 - Ferger, Marc D. A1 - Fischer, Hakan A1 - Flor, Herta A1 - Gaebler, Michael A1 - Gianaros, Peter J. A1 - Giummarra, Melita J. A1 - Greening, Steven G. A1 - Guendelman, Simon A1 - Heathers, James A. J. A1 - Herpertz, Sabine C. A1 - Hu, Mandy X. A1 - Jentschke, Sebastian A1 - Kaess, Michael A1 - Kaufmann, Tobias A1 - Klimes-Dougan, Bonnie A1 - Koelsch, Stefan A1 - Krauch, Marlene A1 - Kumral, Deniz A1 - Lamers, Femke A1 - Lee, Tae-Ho A1 - Lekander, Mats A1 - Lin, Feng A1 - Lotze, Martin A1 - Makovac, Elena A1 - Mancini, Matteo A1 - Mancke, Falk A1 - Mansson, Kristoffer N. T. A1 - Manuck, Stephen B. A1 - Mather, Mara A1 - Meeten, Frances A1 - Min, Jungwon A1 - Mueller, Bryon A1 - Muench, Vera A1 - Nees, Frauke A1 - Nga, Lin A1 - Nilsonne, Gustav A1 - Ordonez Acuna, Daniela A1 - Osnes, Berge A1 - Ottaviani, Cristina A1 - Penninx, Brenda W. J. H. A1 - Ponzio, Allison A1 - Poudel, Govinda R. A1 - Reinelt, Janis A1 - Ren, Ping A1 - Sakaki, Michiko A1 - Schumann, Andy A1 - Sorensen, Lin A1 - Specht, Karsten A1 - Straub, Joana A1 - Tamm, Sandra A1 - Thai, Michelle A1 - Thayer, Julian F. A1 - Ubani, Benjamin A1 - van Der Mee, Denise J. A1 - van Velzen, Laura S. A1 - Ventura-Bort, Carlos A1 - Villringer, Arno A1 - Watson, David R. A1 - Wei, Luqing A1 - Wendt, Julia A1 - Schreiner, Melinda Westlund A1 - Westlye, Lars T. A1 - Weymar, Mathias A1 - Winkelmann, Tobias A1 - Wu, Guo-Rong A1 - Yoo, Hyun Joo A1 - Quintana, Daniel S. T1 - Cortical thickness and resting-state cardiac function across the lifespan BT - a cross-sectional pooled mega-analysis JF - Psychophysiology : journal of the Society for Psychophysiological Research N2 - Understanding the association between autonomic nervous system [ANS] function and brain morphology across the lifespan provides important insights into neurovisceral mechanisms underlying health and disease. Resting-state ANS activity, indexed by measures of heart rate [HR] and its variability [HRV] has been associated with brain morphology, particularly cortical thickness [CT]. While findings have been mixed regarding the anatomical distribution and direction of the associations, these inconsistencies may be due to sex and age differences in HR/HRV and CT. Previous studies have been limited by small sample sizes, which impede the assessment of sex differences and aging effects on the association between ANS function and CT. To overcome these limitations, 20 groups worldwide contributed data collected under similar protocols of CT assessment and HR/HRV recording to be pooled in a mega-analysis (N = 1,218 (50.5% female), mean age 36.7 years (range: 12-87)). Findings suggest a decline in HRV as well as CT with increasing age. CT, particularly in the orbitofrontal cortex, explained additional variance in HRV, beyond the effects of aging. This pattern of results may suggest that the decline in HRV with increasing age is related to a decline in orbitofrontal CT. These effects were independent of sex and specific to HRV; with no significant association between CT and HR. Greater CT across the adult lifespan may be vital for the maintenance of healthy cardiac regulation via the ANS-or greater cardiac vagal activity as indirectly reflected in HRV may slow brain atrophy. Findings reveal an important association between CT and cardiac parasympathetic activity with implications for healthy aging and longevity that should be studied further in longitudinal research. KW - aging KW - autonomic nervous system KW - cortical thickness KW - heart rate KW - heart KW - rate variability KW - sex Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/psyp.13688 SN - 0048-5772 SN - 1469-8986 VL - 58 IS - 7 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hortobagyi, Tibor A1 - Granacher, Urs A1 - Fernandez-del-Olmo, Miguel A1 - Howatson, Glyn A1 - Manca, Andrea A1 - Deriu, Franca A1 - Taube, Wolfgang A1 - Gruber, Markus A1 - Marquez, Gonzalo A1 - Lundbye-Jensen, Jesper A1 - Colomer-Poveda, David T1 - Functional relevance of resistance training-induced neuroplasticity in health and disease JF - Neuroscience & biobehavioral reviews : official journal of the International Behavioral Neuroscience Society N2 - Repetitive, monotonic, and effortful voluntary muscle contractions performed for just a few weeks, i.e., resistance training, can substantially increase maximal voluntary force in the practiced task and can also increase gross motor performance. The increase in motor performance is often accompanied by neuroplastic adaptations in the central nervous system. While historical data assigned functional relevance to such adaptations induced by resistance training, this claim has not yet been systematically and critically examined in the context of motor performance across the lifespan in health and disease. A review of muscle activation, brain and peripheral nerve stimulation, and imaging data revealed that increases in motor performance and neuroplasticity tend to be uncoupled, making a mechanistic link between neuroplasticity and motor performance inconclusive. We recommend new approaches, including causal mediation analytical and hypothesis-driven models to substantiate the functional relevance of resistance training-induced neuroplasticity in the improvements of gross motor function across the lifespan in health and disease. KW - Maximal voluntary contraction (MVC) KW - strength training KW - Electromyography (EMG) KW - Transcranial magnetic brain stimulation (TMS) KW - Electroencephalography (EEG) KW - Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) KW - athletic performance KW - aging KW - Parkinson's disease KW - Multiple sclerosis KW - stroke KW - directed acyclic graphs KW - causal mediation analysis Y1 - 2020 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2020.12.019 SN - 0149-7634 SN - 1873-7528 VL - 122 SP - 79 EP - 91 PB - Elsevier CY - Oxford ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Herold, Fabian A1 - Labott, Berit K. A1 - Grässler, Bernhard A1 - Halfpaap, Nicole A1 - Langhans, Corinna A1 - Müller, Patrick A1 - Ammar, Achraf A1 - Dordevic, Milos A1 - Hökelmann, Anita A1 - Müller, Notger Germar T1 - A Link between Handgrip Strength and Executive Functioning: A Cross-Sectional Study in Older Adults with Mild Cognitive Impairment and Healthy Controls JF - Healthcare : open access journal N2 - Older adults with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) who in addition to their memory deficits also suffer from frontal-executive dysfunctions have a higher risk of developing dementia later in their lives than older adults with aMCI without executive deficits and older adults with non-amnestic MCI (naMCI). Handgrip strength (HGS) is also correlated with the risk of cognitive decline in the elderly. Hence, the current study aimed to investigate the associations between HGS and executive functioning in individuals with aMCI, naMCI and healthy controls. Older, right-handed adults with amnestic MCI (aMCI), non-amnestic MCI (naMCI), and healthy controls (HC) conducted a handgrip strength measurement via a handheld dynamometer. Executive functions were assessed with the Trail Making Test (TMT A&B). Normalized handgrip strength (nHGS, normalized to Body Mass Index (BMI)) was calculated and its associations with executive functions (operationalized through z-scores of TMT B/A ratio) were investigated through partial correlation analyses (i.e., accounting for age, sex, and severity of depressive symptoms). A positive and low-to-moderate correlation between right nHGS (rp (22) = 0.364; p = 0.063) and left nHGS (rp (22) = 0.420; p = 0.037) and executive functioning in older adults with aMCI but not in naMCI or HC was observed. Our results suggest that higher levels of nHGS are linked to better executive functioning in aMCI but not naMCI and HC. This relationship is perhaps driven by alterations in the integrity of the hippocampal-prefrontal network occurring in older adults with aMCI. Further research is needed to provide empirical evidence for this assumption. KW - MCI KW - hippocampal-prefrontal network KW - handgrip strength KW - exercise cognition KW - aging KW - brain health Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare10020230 SN - 2227-9032 VL - 10 SP - 1 EP - 14 PB - MDPI CY - Basel, Schweiz ET - 2 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Graja, Antonia A1 - Garcia-Carrizo, Francisco A1 - Jank, Anne-Marie A1 - Gohlke, Sabrina A1 - Ambrosi, Thomas H. A1 - Jonas, Wenke A1 - Ussar, Siegfried A1 - Kern, Matthias A1 - Schürmann, Annette A1 - Aleksandrova, Krasimira A1 - Bluher, Matthias A1 - Schulz, Tim Julius T1 - Loss of periostin occurs in aging adipose tissue of mice and its genetic ablation impairs adipose tissue lipid metabolism JF - Aging Cell N2 - Remodeling of the extracellular matrix is a key component of the metabolic adaptations of adipose tissue in response to dietary and physiological challenges. Disruption of its integrity is a well-known aspect of adipose tissue dysfunction, for instance, during aging and obesity. Adipocyte regeneration from a tissue-resident pool of mesenchymal stem cells is part of normal tissue homeostasis. Among the pathophysiological consequences of adipogenic stem cell aging, characteristic changes in the secretory phenotype, which includes matrix-modifying proteins, have been described. Here, we show that the expression of the matricellular protein periostin, a component of the extracellular matrix produced and secreted by adipose tissue-resident interstitial cells, is markedly decreased in aged brown and white adipose tissue depots. Using a mouse model, we demonstrate that the adaptation of adipose tissue to adrenergic stimulation and high-fat diet feeding is impaired in animals with systemic ablation of the gene encoding for periostin. Our data suggest that loss of periostin attenuates lipid metabolism in adipose tissue, thus recapitulating one aspect of age-related metabolic dysfunction. In human white adipose tissue, periostin expression showed an unexpected positive correlation with age of study participants. This correlation, however, was no longer evident after adjusting for BMI or plasma lipid and liver function biomarkers. These findings taken together suggest that age-related alterations of the adipose tissue extracellular matrix may contribute to the development of metabolic disease by negatively affecting nutrient homeostasis. KW - adipogenic progenitor cells KW - adipose tissue KW - aging KW - extracellular matrix KW - fatty acid metabolism KW - periostin Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/acel.12810 SN - 1474-9718 SN - 1474-9726 VL - 17 IS - 5 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Baesler, Jessica A1 - Michaelis, Vivien A1 - Stiboller, Michael A1 - Haase, Hajo A1 - Aschner, Michael A1 - Schwerdtle, Tanja A1 - Sturzenbaum, Stephen R. A1 - Bornhorst, Julia T1 - Nutritive manganese and zinc overdosing in aging c. elegans result in a metallothionein-mediated alteration in metal homeostasis JF - Molecular Nutrition and Food Research N2 - Manganese (Mn) and zinc (Zn) are not only essential trace elements, but also potential exogenous risk factors for various diseases. Since the disturbed homeostasis of single metals can result in detrimental health effects, concerns have emerged regarding the consequences of excessive exposures to multiple metals, either via nutritional supplementation or parenteral nutrition. This study focuses on Mn-Zn-interactions in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) model, taking into account aspects related to aging and age-dependent neurodegeneration. KW - aging KW - C. elegans KW - homeostasis KW - manganese KW - zinc Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/mnfr.202001176 SN - 1613-4133 SN - 1613-4125 VL - 65 IS - 8 SP - 1 EP - 11 PB - Wiley-VCH GmbH CY - Weinheim ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Malyutina, Svetlana A1 - Laurinavichyute, Anna A1 - Terekhina, Maria A1 - Lapin, Yevgeniy T1 - No evidence for strategic nature of age-related slowing in sentence processing JF - Psychology and aging N2 - Older adults demonstrate a slower speed of linguistic processing, including sentence processing. In nonlinguistic cognitive domains such as memory, research suggests that age-related slowing of processing speed may be a strategy adopted in order to avoid potential error and/or to spare “cognitive resources.” So far, very few studies have tested whether older adults’ slower processing speed in the linguistic domain has a strategic nature as well. To fill this gap, we tested whether older adults can maintain language processing accuracy when a faster processing speed is enforced externally. Specifically, we compared sentence comprehension accuracy in younger and older adults when sentences were presented at the participant’s median self-paced reading speed versus twice as fast. We hypothesized that an external speed increase will cause a smaller accuracy decline in older than younger adults because older adults tend to adopt self-paced processing speeds “further away” from their performance limits. The hypothesis was not confirmed: The decline in accuracy due to faster presentation did not differ by age group. Thus, we found no evidence for strategic nature of age-related slowing of sentence processing. On the basis of our experimental design, we suggest that the age-related slowing of sentence processing is caused not only by motor slowdown, but also by a slowdown in cognitive processing KW - aging KW - processing speed KW - sentence comprehension KW - language and aging KW - processing strategies Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000302 SN - 0882-7974 SN - 1939-1498 VL - 33 IS - 7 SP - 1045 EP - 1059 PB - American Psychological Association CY - Washington ER -