Influence of reading habits on cerebral plasticity for discourse comprehension in aging

Autores

  • Charles-Olivier Martin Université de Montréal
  • Marianne Desrochers Université de Montréal (UdeM)
  • Catrine Demers Université de Montréal (UdeM)
  • Lilian C. Scherer PUCRS
  • Bernadette Ska Université de Montréal

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2012n63p101

Resumo

 

The goal of this study was to evaluate the influence of reading habits on cerebral plasticity in the performance of a discourse comprehension task in aging. The main hypothesis was that participants with higher frequency and quality of reading habits should exhibit reduced brain activity because the task should be easier for them. two groups of native French speakers, 16 young adults and 16 elderly adults, participated in a task using the nirS (near-infrared spectroscopy) technique. They read short stories and answered true or false probes after each one. They also completed a questionnaire about their previous reading habits. The results show that the more experienced readers had higher activation in the superior left region of the prefrontal cortex while they were reading the stories but lower activation in the same region when they were retrieving the information to answer the probe. Thus, more effort is required to acquire and maintain the information needed to answer, and this effort makes it easier to give the answer. These results reinforce the hypothesis that brain plasticity is promoted by cognitive activities throughout the lifespan.

Biografia do Autor

Charles-Olivier Martin, Université de Montréal

Charles-Olivier Martin is a Ph.d. candidate in biomedical Sciences at the Université de Montréal. before, he obtained an Honor b.Sc. in biomedical Sciences from the Université de Montréal. he is now an active student at the research center of  institut de Gériatrie de Montréal.  his research interests are aging, cognition, cerebral plasticity, nirS techniques and discourse comprehension.

Marianne Desrochers, Université de Montréal (UdeM)

Marianne Desrochers is currently a student in pharmacy at the Université de Montréal. before, she obtained a b.Sc. in biomedical Sciences from the Université de Montréal. She also completed an undergraduate student internship in neuropsychology and language at the research center of institut de Gériatrie de Montréal.

Catrine Demers, Université de Montréal (UdeM)

Catrine Demers  obtained a M.Sc. in  biomedical Sciences option Science of aging at Université de Montréal. her research focused on cerebral plasticity and discourse comprehension. She later obtained her M.Sc.S. in Speech-language Pathology at University of ottawa. She now works as a Speech-language Pathologist.

Lilian C. Scherer, PUCRS

Lilian Cristine Scherer has obtained a Master’s degree in linguistics (language Studies – acquisition) at the Federal University of rio Grande do Sul (UFrGS) and a doctoral degree in  linguistics at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC),  brazil. She has taken part of her doctoral studies and her Post-doctoral studies in Montreal, at the Université de Montréal (Canada), in the area of neuropsycholinguistics, at the Centre de recherche de l´institut universitaire de gériatrie de Montréal (CriUGM), investigating language processing in bilingualism and aging. She is a professor in the linguistics department at the Pontifical Catholic University of rio Grande do Sul (PUCrS) and her main research fields are reading and language processing in aging, bilingualism, alzheimer’s disease and aphasia.

Bernadette Ska, Université de Montréal

Bernadette Ska  obtained a Ph.d. in Cognitive Psychology at the Université Catholique de  louvain (belgique). She developed post doctoral studies in  neuropsychology. She is retired professor at the Faculty of Médecine, Université de Montréal and is always an active researcher at the research center of  institut de Gériatrie de Montréal.  her research interests are aging, cognition, cerebral plasticity, alzheimer disease, right hemisphere damage and discourse comprehension.

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Publicado

2012-12-24

Edição

n. 63 (2012): The Neuroscience of Reading

Seção

Artigos

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.