does it become more difficult to multitask
as people get older? Can we do anything to
improve our attention spans and undo the
negative impact of distractions? Answering
these and other key questions about the aging brain, cognitive function, and memory
has become Gazzaley’s passion.
Gazzaley will deliver two presenta-
tions at Community 2012, the ALFA
Conference & Expo, May 16-18, in Dal-
las. The first will focus on his own studies
into normal aging, and the second on the
latest research into Alzheimer’s disease—
both causes and treatment.
don’t miss
Dr. Gazzaley at the ALFA
conference, May 16-18, in Dallas.
Senior Living Executive: Why is
how we multitask important to under-
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standing brain changes as we age?
Dr. Adam Gazzaley: A lot of people
have studied memory in isolation, as
if it existed in a bubble. However, we
know, even based on our own experience,
that this is not the case. Our memory
is impacted by our ability to focus our
attention and deal with distractions. It’s
very rare to find ourselves alone in a dark
quiet room focusing on just one thing.
I also became interested in studying
this basic phenomenon—how memory is
impacted by goals and context—by how
this was changing in my patients, some
of whom had early Alzheimer’s disease
or mild cognitive impairment, as well as
healthy older adults who were repeatedly
telling me they were noticing the burden
of distraction in their lives more as they
grew older. For example, they described
that their ability to engage deeply and
remember the details of a conversation
in a noisy restaurant was increasingly
challenging for them. They felt their
forgetfulness was often the result of being
distracted and trying to do too much at
the same time.
So I decided to develop experiments,
what we call cognitive paradigms, to
study this. One of the things I discovered
is that older adults perform less well
than younger adults on memory tests,
especially when they are delivered in the
setting of distracting information or in
the context of simultaneous multitasking.
We have spent many years studying this
phenomenon and trying to understand
the neural basis of age-related changes.
SL Exec: In layman’s terms, what is
“top-down modulation,” and what has
studying it taught you about brain func-
tion and aging?
Gazzaley: How we perceive our world
is not a passive event. Information doesn’t
just flood into our brains. It’s shaped by
two types of attention. One is bottom-up attention, in which the nature of the
stimuli around us influences how we
perceive them. In other words, certain
types of sensory input demand attention
independent of our goals—things that are
novel or salient, like someone calling your
