Schedule of Events | Symposia

EEG Correlates of Event Model Stability in Aging

Poster Session C - Sunday, March 30, 2025, 5:00 – 7:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Mohsen Davoudkhani¹ (mohsen135@ksu.edu), Michael Tollefsrud, Trase Byarlay-McQueen, Kristen McGatlin, Alexia Bouslog, Ashi Wickramasundara, Olivia Edwards, Jordyn Gibson, Morgan Skinner, Heather Bailey; ¹Kansas State University

Older adults segment and remember everyday activities less effectively than young adults. Previous fMRI studies (Bailey et al., 2013; Kurby & Zacks, 2019) indicate that both age groups recruit similar brain regions at event boundaries, suggesting intact event model updating. In the current study, we evaluated whether age-related declines in event memory are due to age-related changes in event model maintenance, which was operationalized as EEG pattern similarity. To do so, 41 young (18-33) and 42 older adults (60-85) watched an episode of BBC’s Sherlock while their EEG was recorded, and then they completed event memory measures and a battery of standardized cognitive measures (NIH Toolbox) without EEG. EEG pattern similarity is calculated as a Pearson correlation of point-to-point spatiotemporal similarity for voltages across all electrodes over time. Previous work has shown that pattern similarity is higher within the same event versus across two different events. If age-related deficits in event processing are due to older adults’ inability to maintain a stable event model as an event unfolds, then older adults will show lower pattern similarity within events compared to young adults. We found that pattern similarity was higher within events than across events in both young and older adults; however, we observed no interaction with age. Further, within-event pattern similarity was not related to overall memory for the episode.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Episodic