Natasha Rajah: Sex differences in the effect of age on memory-related brain function
Full Professor, Department of Psychiatry
Associate Member, Department of Psychology
Director, Brain Imaging Centre, Douglas Institute
Abstract: Aging is associated with episodic memory decline and alterations in memory-related brain function. However, it remains unclear if age-related memory decline is associated with similar patterns of brain aging in women and men. Understanding these similarities and differences is critical to providing important insight as to why there are sex differences in memory-related disorders and how treatment interventions should be tailored in the realm of aging and dementia. In my talk I will present results from an adult lifespan task fMRI study of face-location associative memory in which we conducted an exploratory analysis to test the hypothesis that there are sex differences in the effect of age on memory-related brain function, even in the absence of sex differences in memory performance. Our key findings were that: 1) age-related increases in lateral frontal-parietal activity at encoding were specific to women and correlated with better subsequent memory; 2) there were pronounced sex differences in the impact of age on occipital, temporal and VLPFC activity, and, 3) age-related declines in spatial context memory were primarily related to altered brain activity at retrieval in both sexes, but the nature of age effects differed in women and men (Subramaniapillai et al., 2019). These results highlight the importance of considering sex/gender differences in the cognitive neuroscience of aging and memory.
Bio: Professor Rajah received NSERC post-graduate fellowships to pursue her Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology at the University of Toronto, St. George Campus and the Rotman Research Institute under the mentorship of Dr. Randy McIntosh from 1998 to 2003. Her work at that time was focused on understanding frontal lobe contributions to episodic memory. She then received an NSERC postdoctoral fellowship to train with Dr. Mark D'Eposito at U. C. Berkeley from 2003 to 2005 and continue her study of frontal lobe function in healthy aging. She joined the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University, and the Douglas Institute, as an Assistant Professor in 2005 and was awarded the CIHR New Investigator Salary Award and FRQS Junior 1 Salary Award in 2007 and FRQS Junior 2 Salary Award in 2014. She became the Director of the Douglas Brain Imaging Centre in 2011 and was promoted to Full Professor in 2019. She is the recent recipient of the Women in Cognitive Science, Canada's Mentorship Award and the Haile T. Debas Prize for her work in advancing women in STEM. Professor Rajah's lab is currently studies the cognitive neuroscience of aging, memory and dementia prevention.
