1 Neurology Department, Haydarpaşa Numune Training and Research Hospital, İstanbul, Turkey.
2 Neurology Department, Ümraniye Training and Research Hospital, İstanbul, Turkey.
Research Article
World Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews, 2021, 12(03), 304-312
Received on 08 November 2021; revised on 14 December 2021; accepted on 16 December 2021
Background: People with normal functionality have normal cognitive changes associated with the ageing process while many people age without cognitive decline. The most exact effects of age are cognitive impairments in learning, memory, and problem solving. These age-related effects slightly increase or do not change for many years, and do not affect the daily life activities of the person.
Methods: To investigate age-related cognitive effects, detailed cognitive evaluations were compared with 20 years intervals in 7 (seven) elderly individuals at Haydarpaşa Numune Training and Research Hospital in 2019. These individuals are continuing daily life activities and sociocultural relations independently. Mini-mental state examination, verbal memory processes test and visual memory test-Wechsler memory scale for memory processes, digit span test for attention function, verbal fluency, similarities, stroop, and trail-making test for the evaluation of frontal lobe functions, Benton’s line direction determination test for the visuospatial organization have been applied to individuals.
Results: In comparison with the cognitive test results applied twenty years ago; immediate memory impairment is evident, abstraction and attention function are relatively less affected. The tests showing the frontal lobe function, the verbal fluency which also reflects the vocabulary information is less affected, while the cognitive impairment is more in consecutive-complex processes.
Conclusion: Cognitive functions based on attention, vocabulary and knowledge are substantially preserved with mild improvement in normal ageing. The most important improvement is on executive functions due to the decrease in motor and cognitive processing speed in cases where complex information needs to be processed.
Ageing; Cognitive ageing; Normal cognition; Cognitive function
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Gülbün Asuman Yüksel and Gizem Gürsoy. Cognitive ageing: 20 years process. World Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews, 2021, 12(3), 304-312. Article DOI: https://doi.org/10.30574/wjarr.2021.12.3.0692