Cognitive efficiency in late midlife is linked to lifestyle characteristics and allostatic load

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Abstract

We investigated whether cognitive fitness in late midlife is associated with physiological and psychological factors linked to increased risk of age-related cognitive decline. Eighty-one healthy late middle-aged participants (mean age: 59.4 y; range: 50-69 y) were included. Cognitive fitness consisted of a composite score known to be sensitive to early subtle cognitive change. Lifestyle factors (referenced below as cognitive reserve factors; CRF) and affective state were determined through questionnaires, and sleep-wake quality was also assessed through actimetry. Allostatic load (AL) was determined through a large range of objective health measures. Generalized linear mixed models, controlling for sex and age, revealed that higher cognitive reserve and lower allostatic load are related to better cognitive efficiency. Crystallized intelligence, sympathetic nervous system functioning and lipid metabolism were the only sub-fields of CRF and AL to be significantly associated with cognition. These results show that previous lifestyle characteristics and current physiological status are simultaneously explaining variability in cognitive abilities in late midlife. Results further encourage early multimodal prevention programs acting on both of these modifiable factors to preserve cognition during the aging process.

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Understanding differences in health behaviors by education.

David Cutler, Adriana Lleras-Muney (2010)

Using a variety of data sets from two countries, we examine possible explanations for the relationship between education and health behaviors, known as the education gradient. We show that income, health insurance, and family background can account for about 30 percent of the gradient. Knowledge and measures of cognitive ability explain an additional 30 percent. Social networks account for another 10 percent. Our proxies for discounting, risk aversion, or the value of future do not account for any of the education gradient, and neither do personality factors such as a sense of control of oneself or over one's life. Copyright 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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Alterations in the circadian rest-activity rhythm in aging and Alzheimer's disease.

W Witting, I.H. Kwa, P Eikelenboom … (1990)

The suprachiasmatic nucleus, considered to be the endogenous circadian clock in the mammalian brain, shows morphological changes with aging, which become even more pronounced in Alzheimer's disease (AD). In order to assess possible functional implications of these alterations, circadian rest-activity rhythms of 6 young and 13 old volunteers and of 12 AD patients were studied with a recently developed ambulatory rest-activity monitor (RA24). Young and old volunteers showed no differences in their rest-activity rhythm in any of the variables studied. Comparison of old controls versus AD patients revealed that (1) rest-activity rhythm was markedly disturbed in many of the AD patients and tended to be correlated with the severity of the dementia; (2) disturbances were most pronounced in subjects using sedating drugs; (3) disturbances in the latter group did not result from medication as no differences were found in the rest-activity patterns before and after administration of sedating drugs; (4) negative findings reported in the literature concerning circadian disturbances in AD may well have resulted from selection criteria that excluded the group of patients with the most severely affected rest-activity rhythm; and (5) rest-activity monitors offer a practical and fruitful approach for the study of circadian rhythms in humans.

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Optimizing the preclinical Alzheimer's cognitive composite with semantic processing: The PACC5

Kathryn Papp, Dorene Rentz, Irina Orlovsky … (2017)

Introduction Amyloid-related decline in semantic memory was recently shown to be observable in the preclinical period of Alzheimer's disease. Cognitive composites designed to be sensitive to cognitive change in preclinical Alzheimer's disease (e.g., preclinical Alzheimer's cognitive composite [PACC]) and currently used in secondary prevention trials do not currently integrate measures of semantic processing. Our objective was to determine whether a standard semantic measure (i.e., category fluency [CAT] to animals, fruits, and vegetables) adds independent information above and beyond Aβ-related decline captured by the PACC. Methods Clinically normal older adults from the Harvard Aging Brain Study were identified at baseline as Aβ+ (n = 70) or Aβ− (n = 209) using Pittsburgh compound B–positron emission tomography imaging and followed annually with neuropsychological testing for 3.87 ± 1.09 years. The relationships between PACC, CAT, and variations of the PACC including/excluding CAT were examined using linear mixed models controlling for age, sex, and education. We additionally examined decline on CAT by further grouping Aβ+ participants into preclinical stage 1 and stage 2 on the basis of neurodegeneration markers. Results CAT explained unique variance in amyloid-related decline, with Aβ+'s continuing to decline relative to Aβ−'s in CAT even after controlling for overall PACC decline. In addition, removal of CAT from the PACC resulted in a longitudinal Aβ+/− effect size reduction of 20% at 3-year follow-up and 12% at 5-year follow-up. Finally, both stage 1 and stage 2 participants declined on CAT in comparison with stage 0, suggesting CAT declines early within the preclinical trajectory. Conclusion Addition of CAT to the PACC provides unique information about early cognitive decline not currently captured by the episodic memory, executive function, and global cognition components and may therefore improve detection of early Aβ-related cognitive decline.

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Author and article information

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Aging (Albany NY)

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Aging (Albany NY)

Journal ID (publisher-id): Aging

Title: Aging (Albany NY)

Publisher: Impact Journals

ISSN (Electronic): 1945-4589

Publication date Collection: 15 September 2019

Publication date (Electronic): 08 September 2019

Volume: 11

Issue: 17

Pages: 7169-7186

Affiliations

[1 ]GIGA-Institute, Cyclotron Research Centre/In Vivo Imaging, University of Liège, Liège 4000, Belgium

[2 ]Psychology and Neuroscience of Cognition Research Unit, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Liège, Liège 4000, Belgium

[3 ]Department of Neurology, CHU Liège, Liège 4000, Belgium

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[*]

Equal contribution

Correspondence to: Fabienne Collette; email: f.collette@liege.be

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Publisher ID: 102243 Publisher ID: 102243

DOI: 10.18632/aging.102243

PMC ID: 6756890

PubMed ID: 31503006

SO-VID: a8938116-d672-4747-974b-5d2da67808d4

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This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Cognitive efficiency in late midlife is linked to lifestyle characteristics and allostatic load

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Most cited references 58

Understanding differences in health behaviors by education.

Alterations in the circadian rest-activity rhythm in aging and Alzheimer's disease.

Optimizing the preclinical Alzheimer's cognitive composite with semantic processing: The PACC5

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