Two new studies assess how working memory — the memory we use on a day-to-day basis in decision-making processes — is affected by age, mood, and sleep quality and whether these factors impact memory together or on their own.

Share on Pinterest Two new studies investigate how sleep quality, mood, and age affect a person’s working memory.

Working memory is the short-term memory that a person uses on a daily basis while navigating the world, assessing situations, using language, and making decisions.

As a person advances in age, this faculty tends to decline, but there are also other factors — particularly depressed mood and low sleep quality — that can affect it, both in the short and long terms.

A team of researchers from four institutions — the University of California, Riverside, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, in Bethesda, MD — has recently conducted two studies looking at the factors that impact working memory.

Unlike previous research, however, the new study looks at how these factors affect both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of working memory. These terms refer, respectively, to the strength and accuracy of working memory, and how likely it is that memories associated with this faculty are stored in the brain.

The team — whose findings now appear in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society — also wanted to understand whether the factors affected working memory independently or whether they influenced each other, then acted on this mental faculty in unison.

“Other researchers have already linked each of these factors separately to overall working memory function, but our work looked at how these factors are associated with memory quality and quantity — the first time this has been done,” explains lead researcher Weiwei Zhang, Ph.D.

“All three factors are interrelated,” he continues, saying: “For example, seniors are more likely to experience negative mood than younger adults. Poor sleep quality is also often associated with depressed mood.”