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Influence of mid-life cognitive activity on cognitive function among men aged 68 years or older

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Abstract

Background

Cognitive activity in early and late life has been associated with increased cognitive function among older adults. There is less evidence on the effects of midlife cognitive activity.

Aims

We examined the association of midlife cognitive activity with cognitive function after age 65.

Methods

We studied 78 men 68 years old or older. We asked participants to assess their current and midlife cognitive activity using adaptations of a measure created by Wilson et al., which includes reading, writing letters, visiting museums and other leisure activities. Our outcomes were validated measures of cognitive and overall function. We compared midlife cognitive activity to our outcome measures in simple bivariable analyses, then adjusted for demographic characteristics using linear regression.

Results

Our study population of older (mean age 74.8 years) men was primarily white (87%) and well-educated; 65% had at least some post high school education. Although 67% were retired, household income was high (24% < $30 k and 44% > $50 k). More midlife cognitive activity was related to more current cognitive activity (p =  < .0001, r2 = 0.55339). However, midlife activity was not associated with measures of cognitive or overall function, adjusted analyses gave similar results.

Discussion

We did not find an association between midlife cognitive activity and later life function. However, the Wilson measure of cognitive activity that we used excludes instrumental cognitive activities such as dealing with finances or healthcare, likely underestimating cognitive activity for many participants.

Conclusion

Midlife cognitive activity was associated with late-life cognitive activity, suggesting efforts to increase late-life cognitive activity may need to start earlier in life. However, more robust measures of everyday cognitive activity might detect such an association.

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Data availability

Deidentified dataset available on request.

Code availability

Available on request.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the administrative support of Deborah Dye. We acknowledge the use of space and equipment provided by the Clement J Zablocki VA Medical Center. We especially acknowledge the contribution of the Veterans who participated in this study.

Funding

‘This work was supported by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health under (Award Number T35AG02979) and by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health, (Award Number 2UL1TR001436). The content is solely the responsibility of the author(s) and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA

    Allison Cotter, Jessica Kim, Kia Semons-Booker & Jeff Whittle

  2. Research Service, Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center, Milwaukee, WI, USA

    Kate Sherman

  3. Division of Biostatistics, Institute for Health and Society, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA

    Rodney Sparapani

  4. Center for Advancing Population Science, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA

    Jeff Whittle

  5. Department of Medicine, Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center, Mailstop 00 (PC), 5000 W National Avenue, Milwaukee, WI, 53295, USA

    Jeff Whittle

Authors
  1. Allison Cotter
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  2. Jessica Kim
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  3. Kia Semons-Booker
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  4. Kate Sherman
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  5. Rodney Sparapani
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  6. Jeff Whittle
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jeff Whittle.

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Conflict of interest

We have no known conflict of interest or competing interests.

Ethical Standards

This study was approved by the Subcommittee on Human Studies of the Clement J Zablocki VA Medical Center’s Research and Development Committee. This is the Institutional Review Board for this facility. The study ID is 9392-26.

Informed consent

All study participants provided written informed consent prior to any study procedures.

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Cotter, A., Kim, J., Semons-Booker, K. et al. Influence of mid-life cognitive activity on cognitive function among men aged 68 years or older. Aging Clin Exp Res 33, 2689–2694 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40520-021-01825-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40520-021-01825-y

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