Keeping priorities: the role of working memory and selective attention in cognitive aging

The observation that cognitive functions as diverse as perception, attention, and memory show age-related impairments (see "All in Your Mind") has prompted the suggestion that the effects of cognitive aging can be explained by a general mechanism, such as a reduction in processing speed (1). Recently, however, the realization that few cognitive functions operate in isolation has led to the alternative suggestion that cognitive aging may affect certain cognitive abilities more than others and that age-related changes in a wide range of cognitive domains may be a result of a deterioration in key functions such as working memory and top-down control in selective attention (2-6), functions that recent evidence suggests might be interdependent (7-9). The notion that such deterioration is an important event in cognitive decline is supported by the fact that these functions are associated with similar areas of the frontal cortices of the brain (10), which are especially vulnerable to the effects of aging (4). Results recently published in Nature Neuroscience give new information about why working memory performance might decline during aging (11). Cont.... (From introduction).