Life-span cognitive activity, neuropathologic burden, and cognitive aging.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

To test the hypothesis that cognitive activity across the life span is related to late-life cognitive decline not linked to common neuropathologic disorders.

Methods

On enrollment, older participants in a longitudinal clinical-pathologic cohort study rated late-life (i.e., current) and early-life participation in cognitively stimulating activities. After a mean of 5.8 years of annual cognitive function testing, 294 individuals had died and undergone neuropathologic examination. Chronic gross infarcts, chronic microscopic infarcts, and neocortical Lewy bodies were identified, and measures of β-amyloid burden and tau-positive tangle density in multiple brain regions were derived.

Results

In a mixed-effects model adjusted for age at death, sex, education, gross

SUBMITTER: Wilson RS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3772831 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature