Cognition, Behavior, and Memory
Author: Matias Bonilla Bonilla | email: bonillamatias@gmail.com
Matias Bonilla 1°2°, Vanessa Vidal 1°2°, Candela Sofia Leon 1°2°, Facundo Antonio Urreta 1°2°3°, Luis Ignacio Brusco 2°4°, Pablo Ezequiel Flores-Kanter 1°2°, Aylin Vazquez Chenlo 1°2°, Cristian Dario Garcia Bauza 2°5°, Cecilia Forcato 1°2°
1° Laboratorio de Sueño y Memoria, Departamento de Ciencias de la Vida, Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires (ITBA), Buenos Aires, Argentina.
2° Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Tecnológicas (CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina.
3° Innocence Project Argentina, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
4° CENECON. Centro de Neuropsiquiatría y Neurología de la Conducta (CENECON), Buenos Aires, Argentina.
5° PLADEMA, Universidad Nacional del Centro, Tandil, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Covid-19 pandemic had devastating effects worldwide. Anxiety and depression values aroused, and sleep quality decreased. While all age ranges were affected, young adults were less able to cope with the difficulties that the lockdown isolation brought in comparison with older adults. Episodic memory is highly susceptible to mood states such as anxiety and depression, and to sleep quality. Thus, we aimed to study the differential effects of the Covid-19 pandemic situation on memory processes in young and older adults. We expected that as young adults were the most affected, their age benefit on episodic memory will be lost due to their higher levels of anxiety and depression as well as the decreased sleep quality. To test this, we compared two age groups, young and older adults, in a set of tests that collected information about their anxiety, depression and sleep quality levels. Then all participants went through a recognition task, a free recall task and a temporal order task. As expected, both groups had higher means of depression and anxiety values than before the pandemic. In addition, younger adults had significantly higher values of anxiety as well as depression than older ones. In the free recall task, older adults had a significantly higher performance but regarding the temporal order task both groups had a similar performance. Finally, in the recognition task younger adults had a significantly better performance.