Dementia Risk Elevates Brain Activity During Memory Retrieval: A Functional MRI Analysis of Middle Aged and Older Adults

McDonough, Ian M.; Letang, Sarah K.; Stinson, Elizabeth

doi:10.3233/jad-190035

Cited by 11 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 87 publications

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“…Other approaches highlight the growing need to incorporate adults in middle-age rather than assuming the underlying mechanisms related to cognitive decline and brain alterations start in older age. Doing so pushes the boundary of early detection and moves toward life course approaches to our understanding of neurocognitive aging (McDonough et al, 2019 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Editorial: Insights in neurocognitive aging and behavior: 2021

Nielson

McDonough

Soldan

2023

Front. Aging Neurosci.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Editorial: Insights in neurocognitive aging and behavior: 2021

Nielson

McDonough

Soldan

2023

Front. Aging Neurosci.

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“…Data were used from the Alabama Brain Study on Risk for Dementia ( McDonough et al, 2019 ). One of the goals of the study was to uncover evidence for new potential protective factors for cognitive and brain health in middle-aged and older adults at varying risk for dementia along with a comparative sample of young adults.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pet ownership is associated with greater cognitive and brain health in a cross-sectional sample across the adult lifespan

McDonough

Erwin

Sin

et al. 2022

Front. Aging Neurosci.

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Human-animal interactions that stem from pet ownership have a wide range of benefits for social, emotional, and physical health. These factors also tend to improve cognition. Following this logic, owning a pet could indirectly enhance cognitive and brain health through mechanisms like improvements in well-being, socialization, and decreased stress. In the present study, cross-sectional data were drawn from the Alabama Brain Study on Risk for Dementia in which 95 participants aged 20–74 were recruited. Specifically, 56 adults were pet-owners and 39 adults were not pet-owners. Multivariate analyses revealed that pet ownership was related to higher levels of cognition and larger brain structures, and these effects were largest in dog owners. The most consistent cognitive relationships were found with better processing speed, attentional orienting, and episodic memory for stories, and with dorsal attention, limbic, and default mode networks. Moreover, we show that owning a pet can reduce one’s brain age by up to 15 years. Pet ownership was not related to indirect factors including social, emotional, and physical health. We found also that older adults’ brain health benefited from owning more than one pet versus owning one or fewer pets. These findings indicate that pet ownership, especially dog ownership, may play a role in enhancing cognitive performance across the adult lifespan, which could in turn influence protection against age-related cognitive decline.

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“…Participants were drawn from the Alabama Brain Study on Risk for Dementia. Details from the study can be found in our earlier publication assessing dementia risk and brain activity during memory retrieval [ 52 ]. All participants were recruited from the Tuscaloosa and Birmingham areas within Alabama through word of mouth, flyers, Facebook ads, and newsletters.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…From the cognitive battery, we used the scaled word reading subtest from the Wide Range Achievement Test-4 to control for premorbid IQ in all analyses. Note that one participant’s premorbid IQ score was missing and was imputed using a regression-based matching technique [ 52 ]. The MRI session included scans in the following order: resting-state, memory encoding, T1-structural scan, resting-state, memory retrieval, and a visual-motor checkerboard task.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence for Maintained Post-Encoding Memory Consolidation Across the Adult Lifespan Revealed by Network Complexity

McDonough

Letang

Erwin

et al. 2019

Entropy

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Memory consolidation is well known to occur during sleep, but might start immediately after encoding new information while awake. While consolidation processes are important across the lifespan, they may be even more important to maintain memory functioning in old age. We tested whether a novel measure of information processing known as network complexity might be sensitive to post-encoding consolidation mechanisms in a sample of young, middle-aged, and older adults. Network complexity was calculated by assessing the irregularity of brain signals within a network over time using multiscale entropy. To capture post-encoding mechanisms, network complexity was estimated using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during rest before and after encoding of picture pairs, and subtracted between the two rest periods. Participants received a five-alternative-choice memory test to assess associative memory performance. Results indicated that aging was associated with an increase in network complexity from pre- to post-encoding in the default mode network (DMN). Increases in network complexity in the DMN also were associated with better subsequent memory across all age groups. These findings suggest that network complexity is sensitive to post-encoding consolidation mechanisms that enhance memory performance. These post-encoding mechanisms may represent a pathway to support memory performance in the face of overall memory declines.

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Dementia Risk Elevates Brain Activity During Memory Retrieval: A Functional MRI Analysis of Middle Aged and Older Adults

Cited by 11 publications

References 87 publications

Editorial: Insights in neurocognitive aging and behavior: 2021

Editorial: Insights in neurocognitive aging and behavior: 2021

Pet ownership is associated with greater cognitive and brain health in a cross-sectional sample across the adult lifespan

Evidence for Maintained Post-Encoding Memory Consolidation Across the Adult Lifespan Revealed by Network Complexity

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