Neurocognitive aging
How personality affects memory and brain patterns in older adults
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Older adults who are highly open to experience show better memory because their brain activity patterns during learning look more like those of younger adults.
Key findings
Older adults had lower memory scores and less youthful brain activity patterns during memory encoding than young adults. However, among the older participants, those who scored higher in Openness to Experience showed significantly better memory performance and brain patterns that closely resembled younger adults. Statistical modeling showed that youth-like brain activation patterns (measured via the SAME score) mediated 40.74% of the positive relationship between Openness and memory performance, while brain deviation patterns (measured via the FADE score) mediated 26.29% of this relationship. Further exploratory analyses indicated that left-hemisphere brain activity in the medial occipital gyrus also acted as a mediator, accounting for 33.33% of this association.
Methodology
The study assessed a total sample of 352 healthy adults, divided into a young group of 209 individuals and an older group of 143 individuals. While inside an fMRI scanner, they performed an incidental visual learning task involving 132 trials of indoor and outdoor scenes. Approximately 70 minutes after the scanning began, participants completed a surprise memory recognition test outside the scanner. To assess personality traits, participants filled out a 60-item questionnaire.
Limitations
Because this study is cross-sectional and correlational, it cannot prove that high Openness directly causes slower brain aging or better memory retention. The researchers measured personality using a single self-report survey, meaning they could not definitively map which specific sub-facets of Openness (such as artistic interest versus intellectual curiosity) drive the main effect. Furthermore, the relationship between personality and memory was completely absent in the younger adult cohort, possibly because the memory task was not difficult enough to expose personality-driven differences in performance.
How this study connects
Role on claims
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Individual differences in personality traits, such as high Openness to Experience in older adults, are associated with the retention of youth-like neural activation patterns during memory encoding tasks.
Evidence for the claim as stated.
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