1995 — 1997 |
Rypma, Bart P. |
F32Activity Code Description: To provide postdoctoral research training to individuals to broaden their scientific background and extend their potential for research in specified health-related areas. |
Spatial Cognition in Aging and Alzheimers Disease |
0.911 |
2001 — 2002 |
Rypma, Bart P. |
R03Activity Code Description: To provide research support specifically limited in time and amount for studies in categorical program areas. Small grants provide flexibility for initiating studies which are generally for preliminary short-term projects and are non-renewable. |
Neuronal Age Related Changes in Working Memory @ University of California Berkeley
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The current proposal seeks preliminary data toward understanding the cognitive and neuroanatomical basis of the decline in working memory performance observed in older adults using functional MRI. This work will contribute to the field of aging research in several important ways. First, it will provide basic data regarding the most common and debilitating symptom of aging. Second, these studies apply the latest technique of functional neuroimaging, event-related fMRI, to identify specifically which regions and which cognitive processes are affected by aging. As yet few attempts have been made to understand the underlying neural mediators of the well-documented age-related decline in working memory (WM). In 3 sets of studies I plan to test three hypotheses. Hypothesis 1 is that age-related decline in WM performance is associated with age-related decline in dorsal, but not ventral, prefrontal cortical activity. The observation in prior studies of age-equivalent ventral PFC activity is consistent Hypothesis 2 that older adults may rely on compensatory mechanisms to maintain performance on some WM tasks. I seek evidence for a neural compensation mechanism using criteria developed from results of prior research. Behavioral research has tied WM decline to processing speed reductions, but no attempts have yet been made to understand the neural mediators of age-related changes in processing speed on WM tasks. Hypothesis 3 is that relationships between age and processing speed on WM tasks will determine individual differences in neural activity, mainly in dorsolateral PFC relative to other cortical regions. To test these hypotheses I will orthogonally and parametrically vary maintenance and manipulation demands in separate verbal and object WM tasks. These studies constitute the starting point for a program of research aimed at understanding the precise neural architecture of cognitive aging. It will eventually inform a basic understanding of the functional neuroanatomy of the brain, how it changes with age, and how therapeutic techniques may be applied to age-related cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer' s disease.
|
0.901 |
2007 — 2010 |
Rypma, Bart P. |
R01Activity Code Description: To support a discrete, specified, circumscribed project to be performed by the named investigator(s) in an area representing his or her specific interest and competencies. |
Physiological, Neural and Cognitive Bases of Age-Related Working Memory Change @ University of Texas Dallas
[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal is to conduct studies aimed at furthering our understanding of the neurocognitive basis of age-related working memory (WM) decline. We propose to implement new neuroimaging and behavioral methods that take account of potential cognitive and physiological factors that may lead to spurious results. fMRI, a neuroimaging tool that relies on hemodynamics of the cerebral vasculature to localize neural activity, has been used to reveal the neural mechanisms of age-related cognitive changes. On the basis of fMRI data, theories about how brain-aging leads to age differences in WM, a fundamental cognitive process that underlies many higher cognitive functions, have been formulated. At the same time, however, other data have indicated that mechanisms of age-related cerebrovascular change could lead to spurious results of age-related fMRI signal differences. The current proposal is to investigate the neural mechanisms of age-related WM change with fMRI methods that take these changes into account. In 4 sets of studies, I will first test a new method for measuring age-related fMRI signal change by accounting for vasomotor (i.e., flow changes during neural activity) and transit (i.e., arrival time of red blood cells) components of fMRI signal. Evidence bearing on this hypothesis would be important because, to date, no methods have been proposed to account for these age-related blood-flow differences. Second, I will implement event-related fMRI procedures to test the hypothesis that dorsal prefrontal cortex (RFC) regions (that may underlie WM executive functions) are disproportionately age affected, compared to other, more ventral RFC regions (that may underlie WM storage processes). These studies uniquely isolate executive WM processes from storage processes while controlling for possible age differences in the strategies subjects adopt to optimize performance. The third and fourth studies examine the neural basis of relationships between age differences in processing speed and WM. These studies will combine refined estimates of neural activity, advanced fMRI, behavioral and statistical methods to study the physiological, neural and cognitive origins of age-related cognitive change. They will inform knowledge of the neural architecture of memory and its decline, the most common and debilitating symptom of aging. The results will also inform development of therapeutic techniques to ameliorate age-related cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer's disease. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]
|
0.958 |
2020 |
Rypma, Bart |
R13Activity Code Description: To support recipient sponsored and directed international, national or regional meetings, conferences and workshops. |
Resting State Brain Connectivity Conference @ University of Texas Dallas
The discovery in 1995 of resonant neural activity between key brain regions touched off a new field of brain imaging based on resting state networks. This new field has led to findings of entire systems of neural networks that are active in the absence of cognitive activity. The resting-state connectivity field is presently evolving out of an initial discovery phase into an investigatory phase wherein the emphasis is upon understanding the physiologic origins of resting signal, how best to investigate this signal, and how it is affected in special populations. In this proposal we request funding for a conference that highlights this new investigatory period of resting state brain research, and featuring work that pushes out the frontier on two topics of concern to our time and society, aging and addiction. We propose funding to help support a program of keynote speakers, plenary speakers, poster sessions, workshops and symposia, that will facilitate sharing of novel findings, discussion of cross-cutting issues, and identification of emergent scientific opportunities and collaborations in resting state brain connectivity and how it is affected in aging and disease.
|
1 |