Looking for something you remember amid a busy scene - a combination of internal and external search - may become harder as we grow older. Iris Wiegand from the Donders Center for Cognition has secured a NWO Open Competition XS grant to uncover how the ageing brain meets this everyday challenge.
Her 12-month project, “Where are my grandchildren? Neural signatures of age differences in hybrid visual-memory search,” will track EEG signals while younger and older adults search for previously memorised target objects. By combining markers of external visual attention with internal memory processes—and testing which task factors can boost performance—the work promises to reveal neural markers of both, age-related decline and compensatory abilities. This work is relevant to understand how older brains stay sharp in complex real-world search tasks, such as finding a grandchild in a crowd or a product on a supermarket shelf.