Patricia Reuter-Lorenz

University of Michigan | U-M · Department of Psychology

Spaceflight induces widespread changes in human brain morphology. It is unclear if these brain changes differ with varying mission duration or spaceflight experience history (i.e., novice or experienced, number of prior missions, time between missions). Here we addressed this issue by quantifying regional voxelwise changes in brain gray matter volu...

Affective forecasting-the ability to predict how different outcomes will make us feel-is a crucial aspect of making optimal decisions. Recent laboratory evidence suggests that working memory for emotion is a basic psychological mechanism underlying forecasting ability: Individual differences in affective working memory predict how accurately people...

Aging is associated with declines in walking function. To understand these mobility declines, many studies have obtained measurements while participants walk on flat surfaces in laboratory settings during concurrent cognitive task performance (dual-tasking). This may not adequately capture the real-world challenges of walking at home and around the...

The Value Learning Task (VLT; e.g., Raymond & O’Brien, 2009) is widely used to investigate how acquired value impacts how we perceive and process stimuli. The task consists of a series of trials in which participants attempt to maximize accumulated winnings as they make choices from a pair of presented images associated with probabilistic win, loss...

We studied the longitudinal effects of approximately 6 months of spaceflight on brain activity and task-based connectivity during a spatial working memory (SWM) task. We further investigated whether any brain changes correlated with changes in SWM performance from pre- to post-flight. Brain activity was measured using functional magnetic resonance...

Spaceflight induces widespread changes in human brain morphology. It is unclear if these brain changes differ with varying mission durations or one's history of spaceflight experience (e.g., number of prior missions, time between missions). Here we addressed this issue by quantifying voxelwise post-flight changes in gray matter volume, white matter...

Astronauts returning from spaceflight typically show transient declines in mobility and balance. Other sensorimotor behaviors and cognitive function have not been investigated as much. Here, we tested whether spaceflight affects performance on various sensorimotor and cognitive tasks during and after missions to the International Space Station (ISS...

Microgravity alters vestibular signaling. In-flight adaptation to altered vestibular afferents is reflected in post-spaceflight aftereffects, evidenced by declines in vestibularly mediated behaviors (e.g., walking/standing balance), until readaptation to Earth’s 1G environment occurs. Here we examine how spaceflight affects neural processing of app...

A prominent trend in the functional brain imaging literature is that older adults exhibit increased brain activity compared to young adults to perform a given task. This phenomenon has been extensively studied for cognitive tasks, with the field converging on interpretations described in two alternative accounts. One account interprets over-activat...

Demanding cognitive functions like working memory (WM) depend on functional brain networks being able to communicate efficiently while also maintaining some degree of modularity. Evidence suggests that aging can disrupt this balance between integration and modularity. In this study, we examined how cognitive training affects the integration and mod...

Emerging plans for travel to Mars and other deep space destinations make it critical for us to understand how spaceflight affects the human brain and behavior. Research over the past decade has demonstrated two co-occurring patterns of spaceflight effects on the brain and behavior: dysfunction and adaptive plasticity. Evidence indicates the spacefl...

Affective forecasting (AF), the ability to predict one’s future feelings, is important for decision making. We posit that AF entails the ability to maintain and evaluate an emotional feeling state, and thus requires affective working memory (AWM; Mikels & Reuter-Lorenz, 2019). To test this hypothesis, a series of studies investigated whether indivi...

Executive functions (EFs) play a fundamental, yet poorly understood, role in neurocognitive aging. The overarching goal of this chapter is to consider both sides of that statement. That is, we will review behavioral and neuroimaging evidence indicating the centrality of executive functioning to cognitive aging, and we will also delineate some of th...

This chapter reviews evidence from behavioural and cognitive neuroscience research that supports a unitary view of memory whereby working memory and long-term memory phenomena arise from representations and processes that are largely shared when remembering over the short or long term. Using ‘false working memories’ as a case study, it highlights s...

Working memory refers to how we keep track of what we are doing moment to moment throughout our waking lives. It allows us to remember what we have just done, focus on what we are doing now, to solve problems, be creative, think about what we will be doing in the next few seconds, and continually to update in our mind changes around us throughout t...

Voluntary forgetting is accomplished via top-down control over memory contents. Age-related declines in cognitive control may compromise voluntary forgetting. Using a working-memory variant of a directed forgetting task, we examined age differences in forgetting efficacy by analyzing direct measures of memory accuracy and two indirect measures of r...

Neutral stimuli can acquire value when people learn to associate them with positive or negative outcomes (i.e., gain versus loss associations). Acquired value has been shown to affect how gain and loss associated stimuli are attended, remembered, and acted upon. Here we investigate a potential and previously unreported learning asymmetry in the acq...

As plans develop for Mars missions, it is important to understand how long-duration spaceflight impacts brain health. Here we report how 12-month (n = 2 astronauts) versus 6-month (n = 10 astronauts) missions impact brain structure and fluid shifts. We collected MRI scans once before flight and four times after flight. Astronauts served as their ow...

Brain activity typically increases with increasing working memory (WM) load, regardless of age, before reaching an apparent ceiling. However, older adults exhibit greater brain activity and reach ceiling at lower loads than younger adults, possibly reflecting compensation at lower loads and dysfunction at higher loads. We hypothesized that WM train...

[This corrects the article on p. 358 in vol. 11, PMID: 31969814.].

Age-related declines in sensorimotor performance have been linked to dedifferentiation of neural representations (i.e., more widespread activity during task performance in older versus younger adults). However, it remains unclear whether changes in neural representations across the adult lifespan are related between the motor and somatosensory syst...

Age-related brain changes likely contribute to mobility impairments, but the specific mechanisms are poorly understood. Current brain measurement approaches (e.g., functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), PET) are limited by inability to measure activity from the whole brain during walking. The Mi...

Brain activity typically increases with increasing working memory (WM) load, regardless of age, before reaching an apparent ceiling. However, older adults exhibit greater brain activity and reach ceiling at lower loads than younger adults, possibly reflecting compensation at lower loads and dysfunction at higher loads. We hypothesized that WM train...

Aging is associated with declines in motor and somatosensory function. Some of these motor declines have been linked to age-related reductions in inhibitory function. Here we examined whether tactile surround inhibition also changes with age and whether these changes are associated with those in the motor domain. We tested a group of 56 participant...

Objective: The majority of the population will experience some cognitive decline with age. Therefore, the development of effective interventions to mitigate age-related decline is critical for older adults' cognitive functioning and their quality of life. Methods: In our randomized controlled multi-site trial, we target participants' working mem...

When people ruminate about an unfortunate encounter with a loved one, savor a long-sought accomplishment, or hold in mind feelings from a marvelous or regretfully tragic moment, what mental processes orchestrate these psychological phenomena? Such experiences typify how affect interacts with working memory, which we posit can occur in three primary...

Several studies in cancer research have suggested that cognitive dysfunction following chemotherapy, referred to in lay terms as “chemobrain” is a serious problem. At present, the changes in integrative brain function that underlie such dysfunction remain poorly understood. Recent developments in neuroimaging suggest that patterns of functional con...

In Figure 3b of the originally published article, the colours of the bars were incorrectly reversed. The bars shown in green should have been shown in blue to represent the findings from older adults, whereas the bars shown in blue should have been shown in green to represent the findings from young adults. This has been corrected in the HTML and P...

Purpose Spaceflight negatively affects sensorimotor behavior; exercise mitigates some of these effects. Head down tilt bed rest (HDBR) induces body unloading and fluid shifts, and is often used to investigate spaceflight effects. Here, we examined whether exercise mitigates effects of 70 days HDBR on the brain and if fitness and brain changes with...

Cognitive ageing research examines the cognitive abilities that are preserved and/or those that decline with advanced age. There is great individual variability in cognitive ageing trajectories. Some older adults show little decline in cognitive ability compared with young adults and are thus termed ‘optimally ageing’. By contrast, others exhibit s...

In the present study we evaluated changes in neural activation that occur over the time course of multiple days of sensorimotor adaptation, and identified individual neural predictors of adaptation and savings magnitude. We collected functional MRI data while participants performed a manual adaptation task during four separate test sessions over a...

Evidence for false recognition within seconds of encoding suggests that semantic-associative influences are not restricted to long-term memory, consistent with unitary memory accounts but contrary to dual store models. The present study sought further relevant evidence using a modified free recall converging associates task where participants studi...

Several studies in cancer research have suggested that cognitive dysfunction following chemotherapy, referred to in lay terms as chemobrain, is a serious problem. At present, the changes in integrative brain function that underlie such dysfunction remains poorly understood. Recent developments in neuroimaging suggest that patterns of functional con...

Growing evidence suggests that healthy aging affects the configuration of large-scale functional brain networks. This includes reducing network modularity and local efficiency. However, the stability of these effects over time and their potential role in learning remain poorly understood. The goal of the present study was to further clarify previou...

Using an individual differences approach, we evaluated whether manual and locomotor adaptation are associated in terms of adaptation and savings across days, and whether they rely on shared underlying mechanisms involving visuospatial working memory or visual field dependence. Participants performed a manual and a locomotor adaptation task during 4...

Background Adverse effects of spaceflight on sensorimotor function have been linked to altered somatosensory and vestibular inputs in the microgravity environment. Whether these spaceflight sequelae have a central nervous system component is unknown. However, experimental studies have shown spaceflight-induced brain structural changes in rodents’ s...

Overview of anatomical labels of local maxima of regions showing increases and decreases in gray matter volume with HDBR. (XLSX)

The neural correlates of spaceflight-induced sensorimotor impairments are unknown. Head down-tilt bed rest (HDBR) serves as a microgravity analog because it mimics the headward fluid shift and axial body unloading of spaceflight. We investigated focal brain white matter (WM) changes and fluid shifts during 70 days of 6° HDBR in 16 subjects who were...

Pre- to post-treatment effects on resting state functional connectivity in women diagnosed with breast cancer

A robust pattern of increases in resting-state functional connectivity, mainly involving frontal and parietal lobes, characterizes pre- to post-recuperation in the breast cancer patients, regardless of treatment group. This pattern is partially mediated by improvements in attention and working memory as indicated by improved performance in the digi...

Neural dysfunction and cognitive complaints are associated with chemotherapy for breast cancer although trajectory and contributory factors remain unclear. We prospectively examined neurocognition using fMRI and self-reported cognitive, physical and psychological symptoms in women treated with adjuvant chemotherapy over one year. Patients treated w...

Executive functions (EFs) play a fundamental, yet poorly understood, role in neurocognitive aging. The overarching goal of this chapter is to consider both sides of that statement. That is, we will review behavioral and neuroimaging evidence indicating the centrality of executive functioning to cognitive aging, and we will also delineate some of th...

Directed forgetting tasks instruct people to forget targeted memoranda. In the context of working memory, people attempt to forget representations that are currently held in mind. Here, we evaluated candidate mechanisms of directed forgetting within working memory, by (a) testing the influence of articulatory suppression, a rehearsal-reducing and a...

There is growing evidence that fluctuations in brain activity may exhibit scale-free (“fractal”) dynamics. Scale-free signals follow a spectral-power curve of the form P(f ) ∝ f−β, where spectral power decreases in a power-law fashion with increasing frequency. In this study, we demonstrated that fractal scaling of BOLD fMRI signal is consistently...

Head-down tilt bed rest (HDBR) has been used as a spaceflight analog to simulate the effects of microgravity exposure on human physiology, sensorimotor function, and cognition on Earth. Previous studies have reported that concurrent performance of motor and cognitive tasks can be impaired during space missions. Understanding the consequences of HDB...

Sensorimotor functioning is adaptively altered following long-duration spaceflight. The question of whether microgravity affects other central nervous system functions such as brain network organization and its relationship with behavior is largely unknown, but of importance to the health and performance of astronauts both during and post-flight. I...

In this review we provide a broad overview of major trends in the cognitive neuroscience of aging and illustrate their roots in the pioneering ideas and discoveries of Morris Moscovitch and his close collaborators, especially Gordon Winocur. These trends include an on-going focus on the specific and dissociable contributions of medial temporal and...

Although emotion is known to reciprocally interact with cognitive and motor performance, contemporary theories of motor learning do not specifically consider how dynamic variations in a learner's affective state may influence motor performance during motor learning. Using a prism adaptation paradigm, we assessed emotion during motor learning on a t...

Working memory (WM) is an essential neuropsychological system that supports complex cognitive processes. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) uses electrical current to modulate brain activity and may serve as a tool for studying or even enhancing WM. Here, we review the recent research that has explored the effects of tDCS on WM in healt...

Purpose/Objectives: To assess cognitive function in individuals with colorectal cancer (CRC) and identify factors associated with cognitive effects. Design: Cross-sectional, comparative design. Setting: Midwest hospital. Sample: Men and women with (n = 50) and without (n = 50) CRC. Methods: Comparative and regression analyses were performed to...

Memory impairments can result from frontal lobe damage, and because the frontal lobes perform executive functions, these impairments have been referred to as dysexecutive amnesia. Memory disturbances most commonly associated with dysexecutive amnesia include a disproportionate impairment in recall, deficient temporal ordering, source amnesia, and i...

Background: Spaceflight has been associated with changes in gait and balance; it is unclear whether it affects cognition. Head down tilt bed rest (HDBR) is a microgravity analog that mimics cephalad fluid shifts and body unloading. In consideration of astronaut's health and mission success, we investigated the effects of HDBR on cognition and sens...

While many aspects of cognition have been investigated in relation to skilled music training, surprisingly little work has examined the connection between music training and attentional abilities. The present study investigated the performance of skilled musicians on cognitively demanding sustained attention tasks, measuring both temporal and visua...

False working memories readily emerge using a visual item-recognition variant of the converging associates task. Two experiments, manipulating study and test modality, extended prior working memory results by demonstrating a reliable false recognition effect (more false alarms to associatively related lures than to unrelated lures) within seconds o...

Stressful life events are related to negative outcomes, including physical and psychological manifestations of distress, and behavioral deficits. Patients diagnosed with breast cancer report impaired attention and working memory prior to adjuvant therapy, which may be induced by distress. In this article, we examine whether brain dynamics show syst...

Functional brain networks emerge and dissipate over a primarily static anatomical foundation. The dynamic basis of these networks is inter-regional communication involving local and distal regions. It is assumed that inter-regional distances play a pivotal role in modulating network dynamics. Using three different neuroimaging modalities, 6 dataset...

The aim of this study is to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to prospectively examine pre-treatment predictors of post-treatment fatigue and cognitive dysfunction in women treated with adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer. Fatigue and cognitive dysfunction often co-occur in women treated for breast cancer. We hypothesized that pr...

"The Scaffolding Theory of Aging and Cognition (STAC)", proposed in 2009, is a conceptual model of cognitive aging that integrated evidence from structural and functional neuroimaging to explain how the combined effects of adverse and compensatory neural processes produce varying levels of cognitive function. The model made clear and testable predi...

Gist-based processing has been proposed to account for robust false memories in the converging-associates task. The deep-encoding processes known to enhance verbatim memory also strengthen gist memory and increase distortions of long-term memory (LTM). Recent research has demonstrated that compelling false memory illusions are relatively delay-inva...

Background: Long duration spaceflight (i.e., 22 days or longer) has been associated with changes in sensorimotor systems, resulting in difficulties that astronauts experience with posture control, locomotion, and manual control. The microgravity environment is an important causal factor for spaceflight induced sensorimotor changes. Whether spacefl...

Proactive interference (PI) occurs when previously learned information interferes with new learning. In a working memory task, PI induces longer response times and more errors to recent negative probes than to new probes, presumably because the recent probe's familiarity invites a "yes" response. Warnings, longer intertrial intervals, and the incre...

The last decades of neuroscience research have produced immense progress in the methods available to understand brain structure and function. Social, cognitive, clinical, affective, economic, communication, and developmental neurosciences have begun to map the relationships between neuro-psychological processes and behavioral outcomes, yielding a n...

Objective: Altered cognitive function has been associated with breast cancer treatment, particularly adjuvant chemotherapy, but the underlying neuropsychological mechanisms are not yet understood. Recent research indicates that compromised attention and working memory can exist before adjuvant treatment, implicating psychological distress, such as...