Cognitive activity, cognitive function, and brain diffusion characteristics in old age

Abstract

The objective of this work was to test the hypotheses that a) more frequent cognitive activity in late life is associated with higher brain diffusion anisotropy and lower trace of the diffusion tensor, and b) brain diffusion characteristics partially mediate the association of late life cognitive activity with cognition. As part of a longitudinal cohort study, 379 older people without dementia rated their frequency of participation in cognitive activities, completed a battery of cognitive function tests, and underwent diffusion tensor imaging. We used tract-based spatial statistics to test the association between late life cognitive activity and brain diffusion characteristics. Clusters with statistically significant findings defined regions of interest in which we tested the hypothesis that diffusion characteristics partially mediate the association of late life cognitive activity with cognition. More frequent cognitive activity in late life was associated with higher level of global cognition after adjustment for age, sex, education, and indicators of early life cognitive enrichment (p=0.001). More frequent cognitive activity was also related to higher fractional anisotropy in the left superior and inferior longitudinal fasciculi, left fornix, and corpus callosum, and lower trace in the thalamus (p<0.05, FWE-corrected). After controlling for fractional anisotropy or trace from these regions, the regression coefficient for the association of late life cognitive activity with cognition was reduced by as much as 26 %. These findings suggest that the association of late life cognitive activity with cognition may be partially mediated by brain diffusion characteristics.

Prevalence and factors associated with mild cognitive impairment among Chinese older adults with depression

“…These results were consistent with previous findings . Education was found to be an important protective factor for MCI, and it could be explained by the concept of cognitive reserve, as people with a high level of education attainment were more likely to participate in cognitive activities, such as reading, which helps enhance one or more brain properties and contributes to cognitive reserve . Physical activity was also found to be a protective factor for MCI.…”

Longitudinal Associations Between Contact Frequency with Friends and with Family, Activity Engagement, and Cognitive Functioning

“…The link between cognitive activity and cognitive functioning is consistent with the "use it or lose it" hypothesis, which 820 N. Sharifian et al states that engaging in cognitively stimulating activities, such as playing board games and attending lectures, may help to preserve cognitive functioning and promote cognitive reserve, whereas disuse can lead to deterioration of cognitive skills (Hultsch, Hertzog, Small, & Dixon, 1999;Reed et al, 2011). Cognitively stimulating activities may maintain cognition through their impact on brain structure and function, such as white matter integrity (Arfanakis et al, 2016) and synaptic plasticity (Buitenweg, Murre, & Riddenrinkhof, 2012). For example, in an intervention study, older adults who engaged in a strategy-based real-time video game over 7-8 weeks demonstrated improvements in executive functioning compared to the no-contact control group (Basak, Boot, Voss, & Kramer, 2008), suggestive of the protective effects of cognitive activity for cognition.…”

Religious Orders Study and Rush Memory and Aging Project

“…Further, late-life cognitive activity was not related to common neuropathologies [181]. However, it was related to brain microstructure by neuroimaging, which partially mediated the association of cognitive activity with level of cognition [182]. We also found that total daily physical activity measured by actigraphy was associated with risk of AD dementia [183] and negative social interactions were associated with incident cognitive impairment [184].…”