Aging and Attention! Leading experts meet in Toronto March 21-22, 2005

Toronto, ONT – Leading researchers working to better understand how aging affects our ability to pay attention to our environment are meeting in Toronto on March 21 and 22 at the 15th Annual Rotman Research Institute Conference. This year’s theme is The Center of Attention: Theoretical Advances and Implications for Rehabilitation.

More than 200 neuroscientists and clinicians from Canada, the United States, and other countries including New Zealand, Israel, Holland and China, will attend the two-day conference at The Four Seasons Hotel.

Opening the conference on Monday, March 21 at 8:30 a.m. is keynote presenter Dr. Art Kramer, a neuroscientist with the University of Illinois Department of Psychology. Dr. Kramer is highly regarded for his research exploring the role of training interventions and aerobic exercise in reducing cognitive decline with age.

“We know that aging adults experience changes in a variety of cognitive processes related to attention,” says Dr. Jennifer Ryan, chair of this year’s conference and a neuroscientist with The Rotman Research Institute, part of Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care.

“Older adults tend to be more easily distracted, have difficulty multi-tasking, filtering out irrelevant information in their environment, and have different optimal times of day for learning and concentrating, compared to younger adults.”

Presenters will focus on current research related to areas of the brain that are responsible for different aspects of attention. These areas include: the frontal lobes (behind the forehead), which are associated with coordinating and controlling performance of multiple tasks, holding task-relevant information online and filtering out task-irrelevant information; the parietal lobes (near the back and top of the head), which are associated with visual attention, integration of different senses that allows us to understand a single concept; and the temporal lobes (side of head above ears), which are associated with hearing ability, memory acquisition, and some visual perceptions such as face recognition.

“Attention functions as the gatekeeper of information,” says Dr. Ryan.
“The gatekeeper determines what comes in and what has a chance of getting stored.
As we get older we tend to get distracted by things more easily, such that we effectively let more things in. By letting more things in, we may very well be cluttering up our memories full of extraneous information to the detriment of being able to retrieve perhaps more useful information.”

The implications of attention changes in older adults are far-reaching.

The ability to get around a busy environment safely may become more of a challenge.
With an aging workforce and projected labor shortage, employers need to understand the cognitive, physical and sensory changes that happen as one ages – and make efforts to accommodate these changes through supportive and flexible HR practices.
Advertisers may need to rethink how they communicate to the aging adult market.