By Society for Neuroscience
January 10, 2022
Kocagoncu et al. compared the brains of cognitively frail grownups– people with minimized cognitive function who havent observed memory problems– to those of adults with a mild cognitive disability (MCI) or Alzheimers illness (ADVERTISEMENT) and healthy controls. They recruited healthy and cognitively frail grownups from the Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience study. Scientist measured participants cognition with a battery of tests, their brain structure with MRI, and their brain activity with EEG and MEG.
The brains of the cognitively frail more carefully look like the brains of healthy controls than those of adults with Alzheimers illness or a mild cognitive impairment. Credit: Kocagoncu et al., JNeurosci 2022
Cognitively frail grownups carried out like grownups with MCI on the cognitive tests– both even worse than controls. However their brain structure and activity looked like those of the healthy controls: the atrophy in areas like the hippocampus typical in grownups in AD did not appear in cognitively frail grownups. Impaired cognition can be part of the variety of regular aging and is not constantly an early sign of Alzheimers illness. Cognitive frailty may instead depend upon way of life elements– many of which are flexible and reversible– like exercise, stress, education, and cardiovascular health.
Referral: “Neurophysiological and Brain Structural Markers of Cognitive Frailty Differ from Alzheimers Disease” 10 January 2022, JNeurosci.DOI: 10.1523/ JNEUROSCI.0697-21.2021.
Some cognitively frail adults have impaired cognition but intact brain structure and function.
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