age related cognitive decline

INTRODUCTION: Continuous recognition tasks (CRTs) assess episodic memory (EM), the central functional disturbance in Alzheimer's disease and several related disorders. The online MemTrax computerized CRT provides a platform for screening and assessment that is engaging and can be repeated frequently. MemTrax presents complex visual stimuli, which require complex involvement of the lateral and medial temporal lobes and can be completed in less than 2 min. Results include number of correct recognitions (HITs), recognition failures (MISSes = 1-HITs), correct rejections (CRs), false alarms (FAs = 1-CRs), total correct (TC = HITs + CRs), and response times (RTs) for each HIT and FA...

The world is witnessing an unprecedented demographic shift due to increased life expectancy and declining birth rates. By 2050, 20% of the global population will be over 60, presenting significant challenges like a shortage of caregivers, maintaining health and independence, and funding extended retirement. The technology that caters to the needs of older adults and their caregivers is the most promising candidate to tackle these issues. Although multiple companies and startups offer various aging solutions, preventive technology, which could prevent trauma, is not a big part of it...

Recent research has indicated that the relationship between age-related cognitive decline and falling may be mediated by the individual's capacity to quickly cancel or inhibit a motor response. This longitudinal investigation demonstrates that higher white matter fibre density in the motor inhibition network paired with low physical activity was associated with falling in elderly participants. We measured the density of white matter fibre tracts connecting key nodes in the inhibitory control network in a large sample (n = 414) of older adults...

Alzheimer's disease (AD) and dementia in general are age-related diseases with multiple contributing factors, including brain inflammation. Microglia, and specifically those expressing the AD risk gene TREM2, are considered important players in AD, but their exact contribution to pathology remains unclear. In this study, using high-throughput mass cytometry in the 5×FAD mouse model of amyloidosis, we identified senescent microglia that express high levels of TREM2 but also exhibit a distinct signature from TREM2-dependent disease-associated microglia (DAM)...

Mediterranean diets may be neuroprotective and prevent cognitive decline relative to Western diets, however the underlying biology is poorly understood. We assessed the effects of Western versus Mediterranean-like diets on RNAseq-generated transcriptional profiles in lateral temporal cortex and their relationships with longitudinal changes in neuroanatomy, circulating monocyte gene expression, and observations of social isolation and anxiety in 38 socially-housed, middle-aged female cynomolgus macaques (Macaca fascicularis)...

The auditory cortex is the source of descending connections providing contextual feedback for auditory signal processing at almost all levels of the lemniscal auditory pathway. Such feedback is essential for cognitive processing. It is likely that corticofugal pathways are degraded with aging, becoming important players in age-related hearing loss and, by extension, in cognitive decline. We are testing the hypothesis that surface, epidural stimulation of the auditory cortex during aging may regulate the activity of corticofugal pathways, resulting in modulation of central and peripheral traits of auditory aging...

BACKGROUND: Early identification of deficits in our ability to perceive odors is important as many normal (i.e., aging) and pathological (i.e., sinusitis, viral, neurodegeneration) processes can result in diminished olfactory function. To realistically enable population-level measurements of olfaction, validated olfaction tests must be capable of being administered outside the research laboratory and clinical setting. AIM: The purpose of this study was to determine the feasibility of remotely testing olfactory performance using a test that was developed with funding from the National Institutes of Health as part of a ready-to-use, non-proprietary set of measurements useful for epidemiologic studies (NIH Toolbox Odor ID Test)...

The belief that aging-related cognitive decline is inevitable is associated with impaired cognitive performance of older adults. Little is, however, known about the association between changes in essentialist beliefs about cognitive aging and mental health in the long term and among both younger and older adults. From a theoretical perspective, it would be expected that changes in essentialist beliefs about cognitive aging predict changes in mental health among older adults compared to younger adults. These differential associations have not yet been prospectively investigated...

A persistent finding in the autobiographical memory (AM) literature is that older adults report more nonepisodic (or generalized/semantic) information than young adults. Since studies are usually focused on memory for episodic (or specific) autobiographical events, the reason for the age difference in nonepisodic AM remains understudied. This experiment investigated whether the higher rate of nonepisodic AM in older adults reflects (a) a difference incommunicative preferences or (b) cognitive decline, by way of either an inhibition deficit or as a means of compensating for a deficit in episodic AM...

Glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), a proxy of astrocyte reactivity, has been proposed as biomarker of Alzheimer's disease. However, there is limited information about the correlation between blood biomarkers and post-mortem neuropathology. In a single-centre prospective clinicopathological cohort of 139 dementia patients, for which the time-frame between GFAP level determination and neuropathological assessment was exceptionally short (on average 139 days), we analysed this biomarker, measured at three time points, in relation to proxies of disease progression such as cognitive decline and brain weight...

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is common in people with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and its prevalence increases with progressive loss of kidney function. MCI is characterized by a decline in cognitive performance greater than expected for an individual age and education level but with minimal impairment of instrumental activities of daily living. Deterioration can affect one or several cognitive domains (attention, memory, executive functions, language, and perceptual motor or social cognition). Given the increasing prevalence of kidney disease, more and more people with CKD will also develop MCI causing an enormous disease burden for these individuals, their relatives and society...

Sickle cell disease (SCD) patients are at higher risk of developing silent cerebral infarcts and overt stroke, which may reflect cognitive impairment, functional limitations, and worse quality of life. The cognitive function of Brazilian adult SCD patients ( n  = 124; 19-70 years; 56 men; 79 SS, 28 SC, 10 S/β0 , 7 S/β+ ) was screened through Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and correlated the results with possible predictive factors for test performance, including sociocultural, clinical, laboratory data and brain imaging...

INTRODUCTION: Neurological conditions such as Alzheimer's disease and stroke represent a substantial health burden to the world's ageing population. Cerebrovascular dysfunction is a key contributor to these conditions, affecting an individual's risk profile, age of onset, and severity of neurological disease. Recent data shows that early-life events, such as maternal health during pregnancy, birth weight and exposure to environmental toxins can 'prime' the vascular system for later changes...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: There is a scarcity of data stemming from large-scale epidemiological longitudinal studies focusing on potentially preventable and controllable risk factors for Alzheimer's disease (AD) and AD-related dementia (ADRD). This study aimed to examine the effect of multiple metabolic factors and cardiovascular disorders on the risk of cognitive decline and AD/ADRD. METHODS: We analyzed a cohort of 6,440 participants aged 45-84 years at baseline...

BACKGROUND: This cross-sectional study aimed to identify factors associated with age-related changes in masticatory performance (MP) and oral diadochokinesis (ODK) and to provide normal values in healthy old adults for the diagnosis of oral frailty. METHODS: A total of 385 participants were divided into three age groups (Gr1-3): 20-64 years, 65-74 years, and ≥ 75 years. To investigate tongue-lip motor function, ODK was assessed as the number of repetitions of the monosyllables /pa/ta/ka/...

BACKGROUND: Age-related cognitive decline has a significant impact on the health and longevity of older adults. Circulating very long-chain saturated fatty acids (VLSFAs) may actively contribute to the improvement of cognitive function. The objective of this study was to investigate the associations between arachidic acid (20:0), docosanoic acid (22:0), tricosanoic acid (23:0), and lignoceric acid (24:0) with cognitive function in older adults. METHODS: This study used a dataset derived from the 2011-2014 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES)...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Elevated levels of Alzheimer disease (AD) blood-based biomarkers are associated with accelerated cognitive decline. However, their distinct relationships with specific cognitive and functional domains require further investigation. We aimed at estimating the associations between AD blood-based biomarkers and the trajectories of distinct cognitive and functional domains over a 5-year follow-up period. METHODS: We conducted a clinic-based prospective study using data from the MEMENTO study, a nationwide French cohort...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Previous studies have linked the MRI measures of perivascular spaces (PVSs), diffusivity along the perivascular spaces (DTI-ALPS), and free water (FW) to cerebral small vessel disease (SVD) and SVD-related cognitive impairments. However, studies on the longitudinal associations between the three MRI measures, SVD progression, and cognitive decline are lacking. This study aimed to explore how PVS, DTI-ALPS, and FW contribute to SVD progression and cognitive decline...

Aging is often associated with chronic inflammation and declining health. Both veterinarians and owners of aging dogs and cats are interested in nutritional solutions and strategies to prevent signs of age-related disease, increase longevity, and improve quality of life. Physiological decreases in muscle mass, decreased immunity, and a decrease in sense acuity are some of the changes often seen in otherwise healthy senior pets; however, there may also be an increase in risk for pathologies such as renal, cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, and neoplastic diseases...

INTRODUCTION: People with Down syndrome (DS) have a 75% to 90% lifetime risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD). AD pathology begins a decade or more prior to onset of clinical AD dementia in people with DS. It is not clear if plasma biomarkers of AD pathology are correlated with early cognitive and functional impairments in DS, and if these biomarkers could be used to track the early stages of AD in DS or to inform inclusion criteria for clinical AD treatment trials. METHODS: This large cross-sectional cohort study investigated the associations between plasma biomarkers of amyloid beta (Aβ)42/40, total tau, and neurofilament light chain (NfL) and cognitive (episodic memory, visual-motor integration, and visuospatial abilities) and functional (adaptive behavior) impairments in 260 adults with DS without dementia (aged 25-81 years)...