Considerable work has also been done on the development of episodic memory.12 It has been well established that memory abilities decline even with healthy aging and it is important to characterize the extent and the nature of this decline in order to establish a baseline against which effects of brain pathology can be detected. The CNB permits evaluation of age effects on memory compared with other neurocognitive domains. Furthermore, because of its computerized format it allows separate measures of accuracy and speed. As can be seen in Figure 3, within the age range of 18 to 84, older age was associated with poorer memory performance. The Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical decline was evident

both in accuracy and in speed (longer response times), although some modality-specific Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical effects are noticeable. For example, for word memory accuracy is less affected than speed. Figure 3. Correlations of age with

accuracy (black bars) and response time (RT; gray bars) indices of performance on the tests. Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals based on 1 000 bootstraps. As seen, the effects of age are stronger for speed than for accuracy, … A recent application of the CNB in the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical Cohort study of youths aged 8 to 21 years permitted us to examine developmental age effects on episodic memory in the context of other domains.20 In this study we evaluated clinical phenotypic measures and assessed neurocognitive performance with the CNB in genotyped individuals. As can be seen in Figure 4, learn more age-related increase in memory performance was more evident for speed than for accuracy. For verbal and spatial memory, accuracy Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical changes were minimal between ages 8 to 21; only for face memory was there an effect size exceeding 1 standard deviation. Figure 4. (Opposite) Age-related increase in memory performance.

A. Means (+ SE) of z-scores for accuracy (top panel) and speed (bottom panel) for females (dark blue bars) and males (light Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical blue bars) across the sample on each behavioral domain. ABF, abstraction … Memory in schizophrenia Cognitive deficits in schizophrenia have been traditionally investigated also by measuring specific abilities. While impairments were documented in multiple domains, their relative magnitude and their relations to brain systems were not established until neuropsychology and neuropsychiatry began to exert influence. In our first neuropsychological characterization of schizophrenia, we and the field were surprised that memory deficits had the largest effect sizes after controlling for relevant factors.21 Spatial and verbal memory and verbal learning showed effect sizes nearing 3 standard deviations below normal, compared with abstraction and mental flexibility that had an effect size approaching 1 SD (Figure 5).