Project 459578

With seniors being the fastest-growing age group in Canada, the need to promote healthy aging and address causes, prevention and screening for a wide range of conditions associated with aging has never been more pressing. Memory change is the most common cognitive complaint with aging and neurodegenerative conditions, especially Alzheimer's Disease. It has been suggested that there is a "cognitive trade-off" between abilities associated with autobiographical memory (i.e. learning the specifics of experiences) and conceptual reasoning (e.g. noticing patterns across experiences). In other words, people tend to be more skilled at recalling specific details of events or noticing patterns - but not both. I discovered that individuals with congenitally low autobiographical memory have advantages in conceptual processing and are more likely to have occupations in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematical (STEM) disciplines. Individuals with low autobiographical memory abilities also have paradoxically fewer cognitive complaints with aging, perhaps due to practised compensation using their enhanced conceptual reasoning abilities. In the current proposal, I will examine whether the way individuals' brains process information will align with their natural tendency to either reason or remember details and whether these brain processes relate to occupation. Subsequently, I will test the prediction that individuals with life-long STEM occupations will exhibit delays in the onset of impaired everyday memory in aging. These studies will expose the brain systems associated with having an occupation in a STEM discipline across the lifespan, which will help uncover why women are drastically underrepresented in STEM occupations and enhance our understanding of occupational attributes that protect against neurodegenerative diseases associated with aging across genders.