Aging Minds: An Eye Tracking Study on Relational Memory Organization

Authors: Narmer Copeland, Sarah Hunt, Zunairah Masud, Ioannis Valoumas, Micheal Dulas

Field of Study: Integrative Neuroscience

Faculty Mentors: Micheal Dulas

Easel: 75

Timeslot: Afternoon

Abstract: Aging impacts relational memory organization, including the ability to infer connections across episodes and discriminate between similar events. Memory organization is tied to hippocampal function, making it vulnerable to aging deficits. Eye-tracking can index hippocampal contributions to memory and assess age-related changes in memory-guided attention. In this study, younger and older adults studied scenes that were shown at two times of day (day/night), each time with a unique person. They were first tested for each face-scene pairing. Then they were tested for memory across episodes, including inferring which two faces shared a scene (Integrate), and which of those people worked at each location at a specific time (Discriminate). Aging impaired memory across all tests, particularly for the Integrate test. Eye-tracking revealed test type heavily impacted memory-guided attention, while aging only had a small effect. Thus, aging negatively impacts memory organization across episodes, particularly integration, potentially tied to impaired hippocampal function.