Tori Garza
UBRP Fellow
Majors: Psychological Science, Neuroscience & Cognitive Science
Minors: Biochemistry, Consciousness Studies
With individuals aged 65 and older constituting 10% of today’s world population, it is imperative to understand age-related changes to cognitive processes to protect elderly autonomy/safety. The most commonly impaired cognitive processes with age are long term memory and working memory. As a result, deficits in spatial working memory, a process which requires both long-term and working memory, often emerge in elderly populations and are characterized as difficulties navigating familiar spaces or remembering the location of objects. My current research seeks to investigate how aging impacts the neuronal pathway responsible for spatial working memory by utilizing a rat model and simultaneously recording electrophysiological activity in the brain regions involved, (i.e. the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and hippocampus (HC)) as animals complete a spatial working memory task. My personal contributions focus on verifying the specific subregions within the mPFC and HC that electrophysiological recordings are being collected from to illuminate how activity within these regions correlates to task specific information. By understanding how the aging process normally affects how information is communicated between the mPFC and HC, we can establish a baseline of normative aging in order to better identify when these processes are going awry in age-related diseases.