Cognitive Decline During Adult Development and Aging
Introduction
As people grow up, there are increased chances of developing memory loss that is mostly exhibited through dementia and other conditions. Age is the most significant factor in making people suffer from the cognitive decline that affects the independent functioning of an individual. By the time a person grows to the age of 45 five years, the objective memory decline and is much lower than it was in the age of twenties. It has been observed that 40% of all the people who are above 65 years, they show some memory loss. When this memory loss is not occasioned by other medical conditions, it is termed as age-linked memory impairment. This is regarded as being of the normal aging process if an individual. The memory decline that is associated with can be manifested in a situation where an individual is not able to remember details of conversations that they had a year ago. In some instances, the person starts to forget the names of their friends, they forget events and events occasionally. At this stage, the person is more concerned about their memory, which the relatives may not be concerned about. The person also keeps on asking questions repeatedly, they mix wards, they take a much longer time to accomplish a task, misplacing items, and changes in mood and behavior without any justifiable reason. The people who suffer from the decline in cognitive abilities suffer from the cognitive feel that apprehended because of forgetfulness. The issue of cognitive decline can also be exacerbated by some medication, head injuries or traumas, emotional; disorders, alcoholism, and lack of some vitamins such as vitamin B-12. People who experience this condition need to seek medication attention relay in advance so that they can mitigate the harmful effects of the condition. This literature review will focus on the cognitive decline that is associated with age as people develop.
Causes of memory loss
If a person who experiences memory loss does not automatically mean that they have dementia, other factors may cause memory loss apart from gaming. Some of the most significant memory losses can be treated and reversed if taken to the hospital. One of the causes of memory loss is stress and depression. Depression makes a person seem disorganized, unable to concentrate on tasks, and being unable to remember things. The changes that happen in a person’s life and their environment are vital in leading to depression. Lack of vitamin B12 also leads to a memory lapse. Vitamin B 12 is essential in protecting neurons and helps in the healthy functioning of the brain. If a person does not have sufficient vitamin B12, they are likely to experience long-term changes and damage to the brain. As people get old, their absorption rate decreae4s, and this means that they do not get sufficient nutrients from the food, including vitamin B 12, which is need by the body like the brain. People who drink smoke at a higher risk of damaging their brains. If a person can get enough vitamin B 12, a person can reverse the demands that had been caused by the deficiency. People who have thyroid problems are also at risk of developing memory lapse. The thyroids are vital as they help in the metabolism of food. If the rate of metabolism in the body is too fast, a person is likely to feel confused, and if it is too low, a person feels exhausted and depressed. They cause a person to experience difficulties in concentrating on a task, and they become more forget full. This condition can be reversed by medication. Alcohol abuse is also a significant contributing factor to a memory lapse. Consuming excessive alcohol is dangerous as it dangers the brain cells and subsequent loss of memory. If alcohol is taken for a long time, it predisposes an operon to get dementia. Therefore, the consumption of alcohol should be controlled to avoid the adverse effects that are involved. Dehydration, which mostly affects older adults, may make them feel confused, drowsy, and loss of memory. Therefore, it is imperative for a person to remain hydrated as they grow old. Loss of memory is also caused any side effects of some drugs. Some of the drugs that people buy over the counter, or mixing some drugs may cause cognitive challenges and memory loss. This effect is more pronounced in older adults since their bodies break down the medicine slowly, and therefore it remains in the body for long. Therefore, it is paramount that older people can know the medicine that they take and whether they contribute to memory loss. Finally, age is also a cause of cognitive memory decline. As people grow old, they become more susceptible to memory lapse than younger people.
Structural and functional changes that result from changes in the brain
Three are some structural and functional changes that may be used to give an explanation of the changes that are observed due to cognitive decline. One of the most significant changes that have been observed as a result of the age is shrinking of grey mater, thus decreasing in volume. This study has demonstrated that the grey mater begins to decline after a person gets to the age of 20 years. The most significant degeneration of the grey matter can be observed in the prefrontal cortex. The changes in the temporal lobes are moderate if they are stimulated by age, and there is a slight shrinking in the amount of hippocampus. There is a decrease in the decrease of the entorhinal cortex, which mediates the hippocampus and the areas of the association. This is mostly visible when a person has Alzheimer’s disease. One of the reasons that have been advanced to explaining why the grey mater waste away is because of the death of neurons. This is the case because of the reduction in the levels of cell division that results due to advancement in age. This also results in a chance for a mutation to take place.
Another reason why there is cognitive decline as people grow old is due to the presence of a protein compound that is called beta-amyloid. This compound has been confirmed to be present in around 20-30% of all the older people. The people who have this compound are more predisposed to developing Alzheimer’s dementia (AD). This study also holds that when there is a high level of the protein beta amyloids in the body, the persons are likely to experience a decrease in the hippocampus volume. Episodic memory is also significantly decreased. Therefore, some healthy people may have the compound in their brains, and this means that they are predisposed to developing cognitive impairment in the future due to the compound.
Some changes cause the degeneration of the brain of individuals, such as changes in the neuronal size and the alteration of the synaptic density. The decline in the grey matter that occurs in older people is best explained by the process of death of the neurons in the brain. This results in a decrease in the number of connection that occurs between the neurons. This results in the lessening of the synaptic density. This study established that a person of the age of 130 years will have a synaptic density that is equal to a person suffering from Alzheimer dementia. Furthermore, it has also been established that there are morphologic changes that occur to the neurons as the person grows old, which results in the lessening of the complexity of the dendrite arborization. There are also other changes in the neurons, such as a decrease in the length of the neurons and the shortening of the neurite spines, which are the major components of the synapses. Therefore, when the changes start to take place as the person grows old, the synaptic density decreases, and subsequently, there is a decline in the volume of the brain.
Research has established that there is a more considerable decrease in the amount of grey matter in the brain than the white matter as people get older. Some studies have established that the white decrease about 20-30% for people who are seventy years and above as compared to younger adults. The regions that demonstrated the most significant decrease in the amount of white matter corpus callosum and the gurus. Research has established that a decrease in the Parahippocampal white matter was responsible for a decline in communication that takes place with the hippocampal matter, and this results in a possible reduction in the decline in memory for the person who is growing old. Further research has demonstrated that the three is a decline in the decline in the function of the white matter, research has established that there is a decline in the integrity of the white matter that is associated with an increase in the age of an individual and this hampers the effect of an individual in handling the executive functions. Therefore, this results in the cognitive decline of individuals.
Harada, Love & Triebel (2013) carried out research that was aimed at observing the normal cognitive changes that are occasioned by aging. They noted that the number of Americans who are likely to be affected by effaced by the cognitive decline as a result of gaining is likely to double in the next forty years. They focused on evaluating both the normal and the pathologic changes to people as they grow old. Harada and colleagues observed that dementia and mild cognitive impairment are typical, even the people who do not experience them still face some form of cognitive changes that are associated with aging. They observed that cognitive changes as people grow old are likely to affect the changes of a person in their normal functioning. Harada and associates noted that even though the cognitive changes have been associate with adverse effects, there are some positive changes that a person may experience, such as an improvement in vocabulary. On the flip side, this research discovered that there is another aspect that declines with aging, such as conceptual reasoning, the processing speed of the brain, and the memory of an individual are likely to deteriorate as a person develops and grows old.
Harada, Love & Triebel (2013) further discovered that aging impacts on fluid intelligence and crystallized learning. Fluid intelligence refers to the ability of a person to be able to solve problems by reasoning regarding issues that are less familiar or issues that are different from what a person has learned over time. People with high fluid intelligence can learn and process new information with much ease, they can solve problems, and they are able to manipulate the environment to understand what is happening. According to the study, the fluid intelligence of a person is at its peaks during the third decade, and this starts to decline gradually as the person gets older. Harada colleagues estimated that the decline occurs at an estimated rate of -0.02 per years’ standard deviation. On the other hand, crystallized refers to the skills and intelligence that a person can learn over time. This intelligence is overlearned, a person has practiced it for an extended period, and they have mastered it. General knowledge and vocabulary have been categorized as crystallized learning, and this research found out that this intelligence improves as a person gets older. They are at the peak in the sixth and the seventh decade. This research estimated that the improvement in crystallized intelligence improves at the rate of 0.02-0.03.
The processing speed of the people starts to decline as from the third decade and continues to do as the person gets older. Most of the cognitive changes that are observed in older people as they grow old is also a result of changes in the processing speed of their brain. This slowing of the processing affects the performance of many people on a neuropsychological test that is intended to measures the cognitive domains. Therefore, as people grow old, and the slowing process starts to take place, numerous changes take place in the cognitive domain.
Attention, on the other hand, refers to the ability of people to concentrate or to focus on a particular task for a particular period. This study identified some of the noticeable effects of aging on the health of the people, such as seen when such people are executing some complex tasks or when they are required to work in an environment that requires divided attention. As people age, they are likely to be effective in selective attention, where they focus on one thing at tone time while ignoring everything else that is in the environment. But they are not able to focus on divided attention where they concentrate on more than one thing simultaneously. Furthermore, older people perform works when compared with young people on their working memory.
As people grow old, one of the most common complaints from them is the changes in memory. It is true that as people grow old, their capacity to perform is profoundly undermined. There are generally two types of memories that are affected in this case, which can either be declarative or nondeclarative memory. The declarative memory, also called the explicit memory, is the memory that helps a person to remembers events of facts. This memory is comprising of the episodic memory and the and the semantic memory. The semantic knowledge deal with finding information, knowing the meaning of words, use of language, and being able to use the knowledge acquired practically. The episodic memory refers to the kind of memory that helps a person to remembers events that occurred at a particular point in time. It may include memories of personal experiences, stories, and figure that a person has encountered in the course of their lives. The study realized that the tow sematic and episode decline in memory both occur as a result of age by they occur at different stages. The episodic decline shows a lifelong decline, while the semantic decline shows a later life decline.
The other type of memory is the nondeclarative memory, which also referred to as the implicit memory. This is the memory that is outside the awareness of a person. The nondeclarative memory may be exhibited by the ability to remembers a familiar song that was introduced at a very young age. One of the memories under this category is the procedural memory that is concerned with memory for motor skills and cognitive abilities. For example, the procedural; memory may refer to the ability to tie a show or how a person can ride a bicycle. This kind of memory does not change with age and remains the same, unlike the declarative memory.
As people get old, the ability to acquire new information changes considerably over the cause of time and continues to decrease throughout a lifetime. However, the information that was successfully learned by the people continues to remain the same until the person grows old. Furthermore, aging also makes it hard for people to retrieve the information that they have already learned. This makes it hard for them to remember what has been learned over the cause of time.
Aging and cognitive decline also affects the language of a person. Typically, the stability of the language of a person does o change with age; however, ether is some few exceptions that are demonstrated in this case. One of the changes that occur among older people is the visual confrontation where a person is able to see an object and the name that is in it in the same period. This phenomenon does not change until a person gets to the age of severity. From the age of severity, there is some decline that is observed. Verbal fluency also declines as the persons continue to grow, especially after the seventh decade.
Another change that is observed due to cognitive decline that is associated with age is the visuospatial changes that enable a person to comprehend space in tow and three dimensions. The visual construction enables a person to be able to put the pieces together and be able to get a whole. And they are observed to decrease with age as a person grows old. On the other side, visuospatial abilities remain intact in an individual regardless of age. Even as people get old, they can perceive objects that are familiar to them, such as the household’s items and the faces of people. Furthermore, even older people can appreciate the distance of the object that they are perceiving. They can do be able to this either when the object is alone or when the object is compared with other objects.
Another important that is affected by the cognitive decline that is associated with age is executive functioning. These are skills that are vital in enabling a person to be able to engage in behavior that is appropriate, independent, and purposive. The executive functioning over aspects such as the ability of the person to be able to plan, be flexible mentally, be organized, and be able to reason. Research has identified that aging makes a person experience ability to see things in abstract and be flexible, especially if the person is past the age of seventy years. The flexibility is less because the older adults have been observed to think more concrete as compared to young people, and this makes them inflexible in their decisions. The executive abilities are also greatly affected, especially when they are, they required a speed processing of information in the brain. This I proved by a decline in the inductive reasoning as demonstrated by the decline in the computational skills. The other types of executive functioning remain the same over time, such as the ability to understand similarities, being able to give the meaning of proverbs, and the capacity to reason about facts and materials remains unchanged with age.
How to reduce cognitive decline
their changes that bring about decline vary from one person to another. The variability can be attributed to genetic variations among people, medical conditions also affect the cognitive health of individuals, and psychological factors may also result in the variation in the expression of cognitive decline among people. It has also been observed that sensory deficit may also impact negatively on the development of age-related contrive decline. Some environmental factors can be sued to mitigate the impact of the cognitive decline that results from the advancement in the age of individuals.
One of the factors that can reduce the impact of cognitive decline is lifestyle changes. There is a belief that is a person maintains an active lifestyle and participating in activities that are involving may help to minimize the cognitive decline. A contrast that has been carried out between adults with higher cognitive abilities and those with low cognitive abilities indicate that those with higher cognitive abilities engage in some activities. Some of the activities that have been identified to minimize the decline in cognitive ability is being involved in activities that are engaging intellectually. Some of the activities that have been earmarked include using computers, playing games, puzzles, being involved in group decisions. Additionally, some careers are also complex, and the rigor involved helps people to maintain a high cognitive ability. Additionally, high educational attainments have been found to be useful in reducing cognitive decline that is caused by age. Physical activities are also vital in ensuring that the heart remains in good condition. Being trained in manual activities such as farming and dancing are also ital in prompting cognitive wellbeing. Social engagements can also promote the cognitive abilities of people by traveling and attending cultural events and also having quality relationships with family and friends. Therefore, it is paramount for an individual to be involved in activities that help to keep them fit.
Another essential aspect that has also been proven to reduce the extent of cognitive decline in individuals is cognitive retraining. In cognitive retraining, the older people are taken through sessions that are aimed at boosting their processing of information capabilities, improve their memory, and helps them to boost their ability to reason and make inductive decisions. Cognitive training has been observed to be effective in helping people to deal with the memory lapse that comes as a result of old age, and this makes it possible for them to be able to interact with the people and the environment effectively daily. Therefore, people can be trained both at home and in the laboratory such that they can deal with mental lapse that results from aging.
Cognitive reserves also minimize the impact of memory lapse that results from a person growing old. Some people can withstand the pathologic changes that occur to the brain. People who participate in some activities such as those of higher social, economic status, and an increase in baseline intelligence are vital in promoting the cognitive abilities of people. Some advantages, such as an increase in the volume of the brain due to an increase in the number of neurons and the synapses present also reduce the cognitive impairment. People with active reserves have an advantage in that the brain can reorganize itself after the occurrence of changes in neurons. Therefore, individual who poses that advantages that have been enumerated above are experienced minimized memory lapse as compared to their colleagues.
Some activities are affected when a person experience cognitive decline as they continue to grow. However, experiencing cognitive decline as a person grows old does not mean that the person is not able to perform their daily activities. However, in case the impairments are limited to the functional ability of a person such that they find it hard to progress with their daily task without any interpretation, it is always vital for the person to seek medical attention. Research has illustrated that cognitive decline affects the ability of a person to drive. Research has indicated that older people are cause more accidents than young people as results of cognitive decline. This happiness because of cognitive impairment or dementia. Even if an older person is not suffering or dementia, they are also more likely to cause accidents because of the typical effects of the aging process, which chips away tiny in the multiple cognitive domains, which are vital when a person is driving. The aspects that are included in the multiple cognitive domains include the ability of the driver to visual stimuli, which are based on spatial locations. And they also have a reduced ability to perceive and interpret what has been seen accurately. The effect is even more severe when the person experiences a decline in the ability to executive functions and also memory loss.
Conclusion
The normal aging process leads to a decline in some cognitive abilities that impacts the life of a person. Some of the activities that are affected by the normal aging process include a decrease in the speed of processing infarction, loss of memory, language, inability to discharge executive functions appropriately, and visuospatial abilities. Research has shown that the decrease in cognitive abilities’ can be attributed to a decrease in the volume of the white and grey matter and the degeneration of the neurons that transmit information, and this explains why as people grow, there are changes that are experienced. These changes do not mean that they can cause significant alterations in the life of a person, and this means that the person who has the condition lives a normal life. One of the activities that are affected by the changes in cognitive abilities is the ability to drive. The older people are not to identify, process, and adjust to safety issues while they are on the road. This makes them more prone to issues of accidents than young people. Research has also established that older people can get involved in some activities which have been identified to be able to mitigate the impact of cognitive decline as people grow old. Being involved in practice activities such as playing board games are vital in guaranteeing that the intellect of the older person is involved, and this reduces the degeneration. The social relationships are also vital in reducing degeneration. There is also the building of cognitive reserve, and training in activities that can be instrumental in helping a person have normal cognitive even as they age. Since their variations in the causing of cognitive decline with the most prevalent being the genetics cause, people need to identify what may predispose to cognitive decline and seek medical attention when necessary. This will guarantee that the person remains productive as they discharge their daily activities. Additionally, the people who have developed cognitive decline with age are supposed to desist from activities that may put their lives in danger, such as driving.