Decline in Memory, Visuospatial Ability, and Crystalized Cognitive Abilities in Older Adults: Normative Aging or Terminal Decline?

The aim of this study is to explore the pattern of change in multiple measures of cognitive abilities in a sample of oldest-old adults, comparing two different time metrics (chronological age and time to death) and therefore examining both underlying conceptual assumptions (age-related change and terminal decline). Moreover, the association with individual characteristics as sex, education, and dementia diagnosis was also examined. Measures of cognitive status (Mini-Mental State Examination and the Swedish Clock Test) and tests of crystallized (knowledge and synonyms), memory (verbal memory, nonverbal long-term memory, recognition and correspondence, and short-term memory), and visuospatial ability were included. The sample consisted of 671 older Swedish adult participants of the OCTO Twin Study. Linear mixed models with random coefficients were used to analyse change patterns and BIC indexes were used to compare models. Results showed that the time to death model was the best option in analyses of change in all the cognitive measures considered (except for the Information Test). A significant cognitive decline over time was found for all variables. Individuals diagnosed with dementia had lower scores at the study entrance and a faster decline. More educated individuals performed better in all the measures of cognition at study entry than those with poorer education, but no differences were found in the rate of change. Differences were found in age, sex, or time to death at baseline across the different measures. These results support the terminal decline hypothesis when compared to models assuming that cognitive changes are driven by normative aging processes.

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Fronto-parietal Network Segregation Predicts Maintained Cognition in the Cognitively Healthy Oldest-old (85+): evidence for dedifferentiation

10.1101/2021.10.05.463207 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Sara A Sims ◽

Mary E Faulkner ◽

Paul Stewart ◽

Stacy Merritt ◽

Roxanne F Rezaei ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Executive Function ◽

Cognitive Abilities ◽

Cognitive Aging ◽

Brain Aging ◽

Oldest Old ◽

Brain Network ◽

Healthy Older Adults ◽

Age Related ◽

Network Metrics ◽

Future Work

The understanding of brain network interactions in cognitively healthy older adults informs how brain characteristics vary as individuals age and how these variations affect cognitive functioning. A functional connectivity analysis can reveal important insight into the brain's organization, which is crucial to examining cognitive aging. We investigated functional network properties in 146 cognitively healthy participants aged 85+ in the McKnight Brain Aging Registry. We found that the segregation of the cortical association system and the segregation of the fronto-parietal network (FPN) were stronger predictors of cognition and executive function. Compared to other network metrics, the segregation of networks may be more closely linked with cognitive performance and age-related dedifferentiation. We also provide a healthy oldest-old (85+) cortical parcellation that can be used in future work in this age group. This study shows that network segregation of the oldest-old brain supports cognition. Specifically, the FPN plays an important role in supporting overall cognition and executive function in an aging population. By studying network dynamics and cognitive abilities of healthy brain aging, we advance the literature on dedifferentiation in the oldest-old.

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Detection of Dementia-Related Abnormal Behaviour Using Recursive Auto-Encoders

Sensors ◽

10.3390/s21010260 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 21 (1) ◽

pp. 260

Author(s):

Damla Arifoglu ◽

Yan Wang ◽

Abdelhamid Bouchachia

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Impairment ◽

Elderly People ◽

Cognitive Abilities ◽

Early Stage ◽

Cognitive Status ◽

Daily Activities ◽

Abnormal Behaviour ◽

Real World Data ◽

Intrinsic Structure ◽

Age Related

Age-related health issues have been increasing with the rise of life expectancy all over the world. One of these problems is cognitive impairment, which causes elderly people to have problems performing their daily activities. Detection of cognitive impairment at an early stage would enable medical doctors to deepen diagnosis and follow-up on patient status. Recent studies show that daily activities can be used to assess the cognitive status of elderly people. Additionally, the intrinsic structure of activities and the relationships between their sub-activities are important clues for capturing the cognitive abilities of seniors. Existing methods perceive each activity as a stand-alone unit while ignoring their inner structural relationships. This study investigates such relationships by modelling activities hierarchically from their sub-activities, with the overall goal of detecting abnormal activities linked to cognitive impairment. For this purpose, recursive auto-encoders (RAE) and their linear vs. greedy and supervised vs. semi-supervised variants are adopted to model the activities. Then, abnormal activities are systematically detected using RAE’s reconstruction error. Moreover, to apply RAEs for this problem, we introduce a new sensor representation called raw sensor measurement (RSM) that captures the intrinsic structure of activities, such as the frequency and the order of sensor activations. As real-world data are not accessible, we generated data by simulating abnormal behaviour, which reflects on cognitive impairment. Extensive experiments show that RAEs can be used as a decision-supporting tool, especially when the training set is not labelled to detect early indicators of dementia.

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Prevalence and factors associated with frailty in hospitalized older Patients

10.21203/rs.2.13463/v2 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Sonia HAMMAMI ◽

Amira Zarrouk ◽

Cecile Piron ◽

Ioana Almas ◽

Nabil Sakly ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Abilities ◽

Nutritional Assessment ◽

Complete Blood Count ◽

Strong Association ◽

Mini Nutritional Assessment ◽

The Elderly ◽

Cognitive Status ◽

Related Disorder ◽

Factors Associated ◽

Age Related

Abstract Background: Frailty is a multidimensional syndrome that leads to an increase of an age-related disorder of several physiological systems, and cognitive abilities decline. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of frailty among older persons in Belgium and we examined the factors associated with frailty with a principal focus en cognitive, dietary status, and inflammatory parameters Methods: A total of 124 participants (90 women, 34 men; age: mean ± SD: 85.9 ± 5.5 years) were studied, recruited from the Geriatrics department, Belgium. Nutritional, cognitive status and physical activity were assessed using Mini Mental State Examination score (MMSE), Mini Nutritional Assessment score (MNA), and Katz score, respectively. Frailty syndrome was evaluated using the modified Short Emergency Geriatric Assessment (SEGA) score. Medication and medical history were recorded. Analyzed biochemical parameters included C-reactive protein (CRP), complete blood count, blood creatinine, vitamin D level, and serum protein electrophoresis. According to SEGA score, participants were divided into non-frail (n=19), frail (n=25) and severely frail patients (n= 80). Results: The SEGA score was inversely correlated with MMSE, MNA and Katz score. SEGA score was negatively correlated to albumin levels (r = -0.30; p<0.001) and positively correlated to CRP, polypharmacy and age(r = 0.28, r = 0.37, r = 0.33 and p<0.01 respectively) . Logistic regression showed a strong association between frailty, Katz score, dementia, polypharmacy and living in nursing home. Conclusion : Our results provide useful information for understanding mechanisms of frailty. This will help to develop preventive strategies for the elderly at the pre-frailty stage.

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Prevalence and factors associated with frailty in hospitalized older Patients

10.21203/rs.2.13463/v1 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

sonia HAMMAMI ◽

Amira Zarrouk ◽

Cecile Piron ◽

Ioana Almas ◽

Nabil Sakly ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Abilities ◽

Complete Blood Count ◽

Strong Association ◽

The Elderly ◽

Cognitive Status ◽

Related Disorder ◽

Factors Associated ◽

Reactive Protein ◽

Inflammatory Parameters ◽

Age Related

Abstract Background Frailty is a multidimensional syndrome that leads to an increase of an age-related disorder of several physiological systems, and cognitive abilities decline. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of frailty among older persons in Belgium and we examined the factors associated with frailty with a principal focus en cognitive, dietary status, and inflammatory parameters Methods A total of 124 participants (90 women, 34 men; age: mean ± SD: 85.9 ± 5.5 years) were studied, recruited from the Geriatrics department, Belgium. Nutritional, cognitive status and physical activity were assessed using MNA, MMSE, and Katz score, respectively. Frailty syndrome was evaluated using SEGA score. Medication and medical history were recorded. Analyzed biochemical parameters included C-reactive protein (CRP), complete blood count, blood creatinine, vitamin D level, and serum protein electrophoresis. According to SEGA score, participants were divided into non-frail (n=19), frail (n=25) and severely frail patients (n= 80). Results The SEGA score was inversely correlated with MMSE, MNA and Katz score. SEGA score was negatively correlated to albumin levels (r=-0.30; p<0.001) and positively correlated to CRP, polypharmacy and age. Logistic regression showed a strong association between frailty, Katz score, dementia, polypharmacy and living in nursing home. Conclusion Our results provide useful information for understanding mechanisms of frailty. This will help to develop preventive strategies for the elderly at the pre-frailty stage.

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Cognitive Benefits of Activity Engagement among 12,093 Adults Aged over 65 Years

Brain Sciences ◽

10.3390/brainsci10120967 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 10 (12) ◽

pp. 967

Author(s):

Jieting Zhang ◽

Liye Zou ◽

Can Jiao ◽

Minqiang Zhang ◽

Lina Wang ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Abilities ◽

Latent Class ◽

Oldest Old ◽

Cognitive Status ◽

The Other ◽

Latent Classes ◽

Older Individuals ◽

Activity Engagement ◽

Young Old ◽

Active Class

Objective: The present study includes two aims: (1) to understand patterns of activity engagement among older Chinese adults; (2) to further investigate associations between activity engagement and cognitive abilities in this population. Methods: Latent class analysis was applied to answer the aforementioned research questions across different age ranges while controlling for confounding variables (age, health, socioeconomic status (SES), and living alone). Specifically, five latent classes (non-active, working-active, comprehensive-active, physical-active, and less-active) were identified. Furthermore, associations between the classes of activity engagement and cognition were examined separately in three age groups: less than 80 years (young-old group), 80–99.5 years (old-old group) and more than 100 years (oldest-old group) of age. Results: Compared with Non-active older individuals, the other classes with a higher probability of engagement in various activities generally showed higher cognitive abilities (including general cognition, orientation, calculation, recall, and language), but not all patterns of active engagement in daily life were positively associated with better cognitive status across different age ranges. In particular, differences in the individuals’ cognitive abilities across the four active latent classes were especially obvious in the old-old group as follows: the Comprehensive-active class had higher general cognitive and recall abilities than the other three active classes and higher calculation and language abilities than the Working-active class. In addition, significant sex differences were observed in activity patterns, cognition, and their associations in the young-old and old-old groups. Culture-specific programs should be customized to subgroups of different ages and genders by providing different training or activity modules based on their related dimensions of cognitive decline.

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Sensory capability and information integration independently predict cognitive status of healthy older adults

10.1101/2020.04.20.050344 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Jonas Misselhorn ◽

Florian Göschl ◽

Focko L. Higgen ◽

Friedhelm C. Hummel ◽

Christian Gerloff ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Older Adults ◽

Working Memory ◽

Multisensory Integration ◽

Information Integration ◽

Cognitive Abilities ◽

Response Times ◽

Cognitive Status ◽

Healthy Older Adults ◽

AbstractAgeing is characterized by changes in sensory and cognitive abilities. While there is evidence that decline in sensory acuity and enhanced multisensory integration predict cognitive status in healthy older adults, potential mechanistic links between these age-related alterations remain unclear. In the current study, we assessed performance of younger and older healthy adults in a visuotactile delayed match-to-sample task and related indices of multisensory integration to unisensory perceptual thresholds and cognitive assessment data. Additionally, we applied transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) to modulate cortical networks found to underlie visuotactile interactions and working-memory matching in our previous work. Analysing response times and signal detection measures, we found older adults to show enhanced multisensory integration and benefit more from successful working memory matching. Both measures predicted cognitive status and correlated positively with each other, suggesting that they likely reflect a common underlying tendency to integrate information. Sensory capability, however, independently predicted cognitive status. tACS with beta frequency (20 Hz) accelerated task performance and this effect was more pronounced in the older group. We conclude that sensory capability and information integration represent independent predictors of cognitive status. Finally, we discuss a potential role of the parietal cortex in mediating augmented integration in older adults.

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Prevalence and factors associated with frailty in hospitalized older Patients

10.21203/rs.2.13463/v3 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Sonia HAMMAMI ◽

Amira Zarrouk ◽

Cecile Piron ◽

Ioana Almas ◽

Nabil Sakly ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Abilities ◽

Nutritional Assessment ◽

Complete Blood Count ◽

Strong Association ◽

Mini Nutritional Assessment ◽

The Elderly ◽

Cognitive Status ◽

Related Disorder ◽

Factors Associated ◽

Age Related

Abstract Background : Frailty is a multidimensional syndrome that leads to an increase of an age-related disorder of several physiological systems, and cognitive abilities decline. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of frailty among older persons in Belgium and we examined the factors associated with frailty with a principal focus en cognitive, dietary status, and inflammatory parameters Methods: A total of 124 participants (90 women, 34 men; age: mean ± SD: 85.9 ± 5.5 years) were studied, recruited from the Geriatrics department, Belgium. Nutritional, cognitive status and physical activity were assessed using Mini Mental State Examination score (MMSE), Mini Nutritional Assessment score (MNA), and Katz score, respectively. Frailty syndrome was evaluated using the modified Short Emergency Geriatric Assessment (SEGA) score. Medication and medical history were recorded. Analyzed biochemical parameters included C-reactive protein (CRP), complete blood count, blood creatinine, vitamin D level, and serum protein electrophoresis. According to SEGA score, participants were divided into non-frail (n=19), frail (n=25) and severely frail patients (n= 80). Results: The SEGA score was inversely correlated with MMSE, MNA and Katz score. SEGA score was negatively correlated to albumin levels (r = -0.30; p<0.001) and positively correlated to CRP, polypharmacy and age(r = 0.28, r = 0.37, r = 0.33 and p<0.01 respectively) . Logistic regression showed a strong association between frailty, Katz score, dementia, polypharmacy and living in nursing home. Conclusion : Our results provide useful information for understanding mechanisms of frailty. This will help to develop preventive strategies for the elderly at the pre-frailty stage.

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Cognitive Aging in a Precision Sport Context

European Psychologist ◽

10.1027/1016-9040.1.3.166 ◽

1996 ◽

Vol 1 (3) ◽

pp. 166-179 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Bo Molander ◽

Lars Bäckman

Keyword(s):

Older Adult ◽

Cognitive Abilities ◽

Cognitive Aging ◽

Motor Performance ◽

Intervention Programs ◽

Laboratory Studies ◽

High Arousal ◽

Memory And Attention ◽

Age Related ◽

Principal Finding

Highly skilled miniature golf players were examined in a series of field and laboratory studies. The principal finding from these studies is that young and young adult players (range = 15-38 years) score equally well or better in competition than in training whereas older adult players (range = 46-73 years) perform worse in competitive events than under training conditions. It was also found that the impairment in motor performance on the part of the older players is associated with age-related deficits in basic cognitive abilities, such as memory and attention. These results support the hypothesis that older players may be able to compensate for age-related deficits under relaxed conditions, but not under conditions of high arousal. The possibility of improving the performance of the older players in stressful situations by means of various intervention programs is discussed.

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Personalizing Child Protection: The Value of Responsivity Factors

Social Sciences ◽

10.3390/socsci10060205 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 (6) ◽

pp. 205

Author(s):

Anne M. E. Bijlsma ◽

Claudia E. van der Put ◽

Geertjan Overbeek ◽

Geert Jan J. M. Stams ◽

Mark Assink

Keyword(s):

Social Support ◽

Systematic Review ◽

Child Protection ◽

Cognitive Abilities ◽

Specific Treatment ◽

Individual Characteristics ◽

Growing Body ◽

Risk Need Responsivity ◽

Forensic Care ◽

Responsivity Principle

Personalization is an important strategy for enhancing the effectiveness of treatment that is aimed at reducing the risk of child maltreatment. In recent years, a growing body of research has appeared on how child protection can benefit from the principles of the Risk-Need-Responsivity model, but no attention has yet been paid to the implementation of the responsivity principle in child protection. Put simply, this principle states that treatment must be tailored to individual characteristics of clients to optimize its effectiveness. This study was the first to address how the responsivity principle can be of value in child protection. First, a systematic review of responsivity factors in forensic care was performed. Second, the relevance of applying each factor in child protection was examined through interviews with clinical professionals working in the field, who also provided suggestions on how treatment can be tailored to each of these factors. This resulted in an overview of seven responsivity factors all related to caregiver characteristics: problem denial, motivation to cooperate with treatment, psychological problems, cognitive abilities, cultural background, practical barriers such as financial problems and social support, and barriers to specific treatment types such as group therapy. Implications and recommendations for strengthening clinical practice are discussed.

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Reference intervals for 26 common biochemical analytes in term neonates in Jilin Province, China

BMC Pediatrics ◽

10.1186/s12887-021-02565-8 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 21 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Kaijin Wang ◽

Xuetong Zhu ◽

Qi Zhou ◽

Jiancheng Xu

Keyword(s):

Lactate Dehydrogenase ◽

Clinical Decision Making ◽

Reference Intervals ◽

Individual Characteristics ◽

Integrated System ◽

Delivery Mode ◽

Related Factor ◽

Term Neonates ◽

Age Related ◽

Laboratory Test Results

Abstract Background Biochemical analytes provide information for neonatal disease management and therapy, and population-based reference intervals (RIs) are essential to accurately interpret laboratory test results. This study aimed to establish local RIs for biochemical assays in term neonates. Methods A total of 195 healthy term neonates from birth to 3rd day were recruited as reference individuals prospectively. Analytes of 26 common biochemistries were measured using the VITROS 5600 Integrated System. The 3-level nested ANOVA was performed to assess the need for partitioning RIs of each analyte, and RIs were derived by a nonparametric method or robust method. Multiple regression analysis was used to evaluate specific correlations between the analytes and individual characteristics including age, gender, gestational age, birthweight and delivery mode. Results There were no between-sex differences in all analytes, whereas there were significant between-day-age differences in 6 analytes. Small between-delivery-mode differences were observed in the results for potassium, phosphorus, and urea. The major related factor of most analytes was postnatal age. During the first 3 days, values of iron, lipids and lipoproteins increased; creatinine, urea, uric acid, creatine kinase and lactate dehydrogenase decreased; other analytes showed slight changes or relatively stable trends. Reference limits of some analytes, particularly lactate dehydrogenase and alkaline phosphatase, were significantly different from adult and pediatric groups. Conclusions RIs of 26 common biochemical analytes are established for term neonates aged 0 to 3 days in northeast China. Additionally, it is suggested that age-related changes should be valued in the clinical decision-making process for newborns.

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