Almeida Meza, Pamela Noemi;
(2023)
Determinants of cognitive ageing and dementia.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
Background: Sociobehavioural determinants of cognitive reserve (CR), such as education, verbal ability, occupation, and leisure, have been found to be beneficial to older age cognitive health, but more evidence is needed to understand the pathways involved and the relationship between CR, cognitive function, brain reserve (BR), and dementia risk. / Methods: CR theory (1) was tested with moderation models utilising the Cognitive Reserve Index (CRI) (2) and verbal ability, in the associations between childhood cognition or brain markers and older age cognitive function in three cohort studies (NSHD, Insight 46 and UK Biobank, Chapters 4 to 6). The association between leisure engagement and dementia incidence was explored in one cohort study (ELSA, Chapter 7). / Results: CR modifies cognitive ability, whereby for individuals with lower childhood cognitive ability, higher CR scores predict higher later-life cognitive function. Across studies, the CR markers were consistently associated with older age cognitive function, independently of childhood cognition and brain markers, but their contribution to BR was less clear (Chapter 5). Furthermore, the moderating role of CR was inconsistent; CR modified the association between brain markers and cognitive function in Insight 46 (Chapter 5), but this was not replicated in UK Biobank (Chapter 6). Finally, leisure engagement showed a consistent association with cognitive function and BR and modified the association between these two variables (Chapters 4 to 6). The ELSA study suggested that for married individuals, intellectual leisure engagement was associated with a reduced incidence of dementia (Chapter 7). / Conclusions: The observational evidence from this thesis adds to the growing evidence for the multiple pathways through which various sociobehavioural determinants are associated with older-age cognitive function and dementia. The findings can inform public policy and design effective interventions to prevent cognitive ageing and dementia.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Determinants of cognitive ageing and dementia |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2023. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10174089 |
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