Longitudinal change in working memory as a function of APOE genotype in midlife and old age

Abstract Research on the association of alcohol consumption with cognitive aging revealed mixed evidence: Whereas a u-shaped relationship has been found in many studies, suggesting that low to moderate alcohol consumption predicts more favorable cognitive outcomes than abstinence, other findings suggest that alcohol is a more linearly related risk factor for cognitive decline. These inconsistencies may partly be due to methodological variation in the statistical modeling of intraindividual changes in both, alcohol consumption and cognition across old age. The present study analyzed longitudinal change in and the mutual effects between alcohol consumption habits and verbal episodic memory (word list recall), using vector autoregressive (VAR) mixed models with nonlinear cross-lagged effects. Data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing was examined, including N=13388 aged 50+ (M=67.6, SD=9.25; 54.7% female), assessed at up to eight occasions with two-year follow-up intervals (2002/3–2016/17). The self-reported one-year frequency of alcohol drinking days (ADD) served as indicator of alcohol consumption. Basically, ADD predicted follow-up memory performance in a reverse u-shaped fashion, indicating best memory performance after moderate ADD, compared with both ends of the ADD continuum (i.e., drinking never vs. every day). Considering moderators, most notably age did not interact with cross-lagged effects, suggesting that those observed across an older age-range were not more (or less) vulnerable to effects of alcohol consumption on memory performance. Thus, this study adds further support for non-detrimental, if not beneficial, effects of moderate alcohol consumption on cognitive aging – regarding in particular age-related loss of episodic memory.

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Individual differences and predictors of forgetting in old age: The role of processing speed and working memory

Aging Neuropsychology and Cognition ◽

10.1080/13825585.2012.690364 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 20 (2) ◽

pp. 195-219 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Daniel Zimprich ◽

Tanja Kurtz

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Individual Differences ◽

Old Age ◽

Processing Speed

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Apoe Genotype, Aerobic Fitness, And Cerebral Cortical Activation During Working Memory Challenge In Middle-aged Adults

Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise ◽

10.1249/01.mss.0000353485.46449.8e ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 41 ◽

pp. 70

Author(s):

Jo B. Zimmerman ◽

Andrew T. Ludlow ◽

Sarah Witkowski ◽

Maureen Kayes ◽

David Poeppel ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Aerobic Fitness ◽

Apoe Genotype ◽

Cortical Activation ◽

Middle Aged ◽

Middle Aged Adults

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What is Still Working in Working Memory in Old Age: Dual Tasking and Resistance to Interference Do Not Explain Age-Related Item Loss After a Focus Switch

The Journals of Gerontology Series B ◽

10.1093/geronb/gbs119 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 68 (5) ◽

pp. 762-770 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

P. Verhaeghen ◽

Y. Zhang

Keyword(s):

Working Memory ◽

Old Age ◽

The Effect of Baseline Performance and Age on Cognitive Training Improvements in Older Adults: A Qualitative Review

Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer's Disease ◽

10.14283/jpad.2020.55 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-10

Author(s):

J.S. Shaw ◽

S.M.H. Hosseini

Keyword(s):

Alzheimer’S Disease ◽

Alzheimer's Disease ◽

Working Memory ◽

Individual Differences ◽

Executive Functioning ◽

Episodic Memory ◽

Old Age ◽

Cognitive Training ◽

Cognitive Abilities ◽

Baseline Performance

Findings that the brain is capable of plasticity up until old age have led to interest in the use of cognitive training as a potential intervention to delay the onset of dementia. However, individuals participating in training regimens differ greatly with respect to their outcomes, demonstrating the importance of considering individual differences, in particular age and baseline performance in a cognitive domain, when evaluating the effectiveness of cognitive training. In this review, we summarize existing literature on cognitive training in adults across the domains of episodic memory, working memory and the task-switching component of executive functioning to clarify the picture on the impact of age and baseline performance on cognitive training-related improvements. Studies targeting episodic memory induced greater improvements in younger adults with more intact cognitive abilities, explained in part by factors specific to episodic memory training. By contrast, older, lower baseline performance adults improved most in several studies targeting working memory in older individuals as well as in the majority of studies targeting executive functioning, suggesting the preservation of neural plasticity in these domains until very old age. Our findings can have important implications for informing the design of future interventions for enhancing cognitive functions in individuals at the prodromal stage of Alzheimer’s Disease and potentially delaying the clinical onset of Alzheimer’s Disease. Future research should more clearly stratify individuals according to their baseline cognitive abilities and assign specialized, skill-specific cognitive training regimens in order to directly answer the question of how individual differences impact training effectiveness.

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Concurrent and Predictive Associations between the Life's Simple 7 & Brain Structure in Middle-Age and Early-Old Age

Innovation in Aging ◽

10.1093/geroni/igab046.3573 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽

pp. 1005-1006

Author(s):

Teresa Warren ◽

McKenna Williams ◽

Christine Fennema-Notestine ◽

Jeremy Elman ◽

Jennifer de Anda ◽

...

Keyword(s):

White Matter ◽

Old Age ◽

Cortical Thickness ◽

Cardiovascular Health ◽

Brain Aging ◽

Apoe Genotype ◽

Mean Diffusivity ◽

Life’S Simple 7 ◽

Life's Simple 7 ◽

Early Old Age

Abstract American Heart Association’s (AHA) Life’s Simple 7 (LS7), an index of cardiovascular health risks, has been associated with worse brain outcomes but few examined this relationship in midlife. We examined whether LS7 scores at midlife were associated with brain morphometry in early old age. Participants were 471 men who participated in the Vietnam Era Twin Study of Aging. The LS7 index was assessed at mean age 62 (range 55-66) and 68 (range 61-71) and included smoking, physical activity, diet, body mass index, cholesterol, glucose, and blood pressure. Each factor was coded, per AHA criteria, on a 3-point scale (0/poor-2/ideal) and summed to create a composite score (0-14). At mean age 68, participants underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging, which was used to create the previously validated brain measures. Scores included: the ratio of abnormal white matter to white matter, and two Alzheimer’s disease brain signatures (cortical thickness/volume signature and a mean diffusivity (MD) signature). Analyses controlled for age, education, income, ethnicity, and APOE genotype. Concurrently at mean age 68, the LS7 was associated with cortical thickness/volume (F=4.85, p = .028), MD (F=10.89, p = .001) signatures and abnormal white matter ratio (F=14.04, p < .001). Prospectively, the LS7 at mean 62 was significantly associated with age 68 cortical thickness/volume (F=5.08, p = .025) and MD (F=5.54, p = .019) signatures but not with abnormal white matter ratio. These results suggest that prevention strategies that promote heart healthy behaviors could have implications for healthy brain aging.

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