Intellectual demand and formal education as: cognitive protection factors in Alzheimer's disease

Abstract

To investigate the possible association between educational level and previous professional occupation, and objective cognitive and functional evaluation in a sample of elderly patients with Alzheimer’s disease.MethodsThrough retrospective analysis of medical files, 174 patients with probable Alzheimer disease were randomly selected, classified and submitted to analysis according to previous professional occupation and years of formal education.ResultsSubjects with lower education and less intellectually-demanding occupations performed worse than higher educated subjects in all cognitive subtests and on the functional scale.ConclusionsResults indicate that not only the total years of education, but also professional occupation has an impact on cognition and functioning in accordance with the hypothesis of cognitive reserve. Our findings confirmed this hypothesis, where subjects with higher education/ higher intellectual demand manifested first symptoms later than low education/ low intellectual demand subjects, with the latter group also exhibiting faster disease progression.

Cognitive Reserve in Dementia: Implications for Cognitive Training

“…Data from the literature provide evidence of a reduced risk of AD in people with high educational level (Scarmeas et al, 2004 ; Allegri et al, 2010 ). Some protective effects are found for occupations implying high responsibility (Qiu et al, 2003 ; Wajman and Bertolucci, 2010 ) and for leisure time activities involving learning, attention, memory and other intellectual skills (Fabrigoule et al, 1995 ; Wilson et al, 2013 ). Nevertheless, there is evidence that individuals with high CR have lower life expectancy and quicker progression of the disease after the onset of clinical symptoms of neurodegenerative disease (Hall et al, 2007 ).…”

Cognitive Impairment in Alzheimer’s Disease: Longitudinal Data from Brazilian Elderly

“…The results showed that participants in the group with less schooling and professional areas considered less complex compared to the intellectual demand performed worse when compared with more educated, favoring the concept of cognitive reserve [24]. Another interesting point of this study is that only the Clock Drawing Test, due the Mendez scale et al [14] showed no significant difference in pre and post test participants.…”

Deficiência cognitiva e sua influência sobre os distúrbios de equilíbrio em idosos institucionalizados

“…Unochapecó Ano 5, n. 1 -Jan/Jun. 2017 p. [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30] Jaíne de Fátima Oliveira Andrade. jaine_mv19@hotmail.com …”