Experimental Aging Research最新文献

Background: Olfactory-based cognitive stimulation is frequently proposed for memory-impaired patients (namely dementia patients), but little is known about the scientific rationale underlying odor choice.

Objectives: Here, we aimed at investigating the evolution of the olfactory experience related to memory evocation in normal aging. Methods. We presented 20 odorants to 25 Young Adults (YA), 36 "young" Older Adults (OA; 65 - 74y) and 26 "old" OA (75 - 89y) and asked them to freely report what each odor evoked to them. Responses were analyzed using both univariate inferential statistics and multivariate descriptive analysis.

Results: Results showed that the ability to experience phenomenological properties of evoked memories decreases with advancing age. Odor identity is increasingly used as a retrieval cue with age, providing necessary support for OA retrieval strategies. However, semantic information does not enhance the chances for old-OA to experience memories' phenomenological properties.

Conclusion: Tailoring the choice of odors during stimulating activities is therefore crucial. In this respect, we provided a limited selection of the most well-characterized odorous stimuli and sorted them based on the phenomenological experience they're more likely to trigger across ages.

Background: Elevated worry is an early indicator of cognitive decline in older adults. Worry has been linked to pro-inflammatory processes though the exact relations between worry, inflammation, and cognition in older adults with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) remain unexplored. The present study studied the association of worry with proteomic biomarkers of inflammation and cognition.

Method: Participants include 66 community-dwelling older adults with amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). Inflammation was analyzed using the modified aptamer-based assay SomaScan Platform. Primary analyses consisted of two hierarchical regression models with mean-centered worry and inflammation as independent variables and age as covariate. Composite scores of executive function and processing speed were entered as the dependent variable in separate models.

Results: Results indicate a significant interaction between worry and placental growth factor (PIGF) on processing speed, such that worry intensifies the inverse relationship of PIGF and processing speed. Worry did not interact with PIGF to predict executive functioning.

Conclusion: Findings indicate an important moderating role of worry in the association of pro-inflammatory PIGF and processing speed. Results suggest that older adults with cognitive impairment may be more susceptible to the indirect impact of worry and expands emerging research on the role of PIGF in cognitive impairment.

Background: As the elderly population is growing worldwide and communication is increasingly relayed by visual interfaces, identifying age-related changes in the visual perception of complex stimuli is critical. We examined the effect of spatial frequency filtering on object categorization in young (mean 25 years) and older (mean 65 years) participants.

Method: The stimuli used were low spatial frequency (LSF, cutoff 8 cpi) or high spatial frequency (HSF, cutoff 24 cpi) images of objects of various categories, and hybrid images composed of a LSF object superimposed on a HSF object from a different semantic category. Participants were asked to press a key when they detected an object from a specified category (e.g., animal).

Results: Young participants categorized efficiently LSF and HSF images, and exhibited a bias towards the HSF component of hybrid images. Older participants showed a better performance on LSF than on HSF images and exhibited a strong bias towards the LSF component of hybrid image.

Conclusion: The results show that LSF are better preserved than HSF in older people. The greater interference of LSF than HSF in older than in young adults suggests that LSF are available earlier than HSF in older people.

Background: Several studies have proven the presence of cohesion difficulties in neurogenic communication disorders. However, we still have very little information about discourse cohesion in the intact adult population and the factors that influence it. The aim of the present study is to provide additional information on this topic and to assess the effect of age and education on discourse cohesion.

Methods: One hundred and eighty-two healthy Slovak-speaking adult participants were divided into three age groups and three education groups were asked to tell Cinderella's story. The cohesion of the obtained discourse samples was evaluated.

Results: Our study indicates no significant effect of age. However, an increasing tendency of the occurrence of cohesive tie errors with increasing age was described. Education, on the other hand, turned out to be a statistically significant factor and had an impact on the overall use of cohesive ties as well as the use of referential pronouns.

Conclusion: Our findings suggest that monitoring the influence of education when creating normative data for discourse cohesion is more important than monitoring the effect of age.

Objectives: To investigate the association between body pain and physical frailty among older adults in India and to examine whether this association is mediated by symptoms of depression and insomnia.

Methods: Data were obtained from the Longitudinal Aging Study in India, comprising 31,464 adults aged 60 and older. Physical frailty was assessed using a modified version of the frailty phenotype developed by Fried and colleagues. Multivariable logistic regression was used to analyze associations, and the Karlson-Holm-Breen method was employed to evaluate mediation effects.

Results: The prevalence of frailty was 30.65%, with women showing a higher prevalence than men (33.16% vs. 27.85%). Older adults experiencing body pain had increased odds of frailty (adjusted odds ratio [aOR]: 1.17, 95% CI: 1.06-1.35). Depression (aOR: 1.70, 95% CI: 1.44-2.01) and insomnia symptoms (aOR: 1.58, 95% CI: 1.38-1.81) were independently associated with higher odds of frailty. Mediation analysis showed that depression mediated 8.4% of the association between pain and frailty in men and 6.11% in women. Insomnia symptoms mediated 11.47% of the association in men and 14.54% in women.

Conclusion: Body pain was significantly associated with a higher likelihood of frailty among older adults in India. Symptoms of depression and insomnia partially mediated this association, with a stronger mediating effect observed for insomnia in women. Inclusive health care strategies addressing pain, depression, and insomnia could help mitigate the risk of frailty in this population.

Background: Prevalence of chronic musculoskeletal pain and depressive symptoms in adults is high; however, whether there is an association between these conditions in older adults is unknown.

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the association of depressive symptoms with chronic musculoskeletal pain, and specifically with chronic LBP and knee osteoarthritis (OA), in community-dwelling older adults. In addition, we explored whether physical activity can mitigate these associations.

Methods: A cross-sectional study design. A cross-sectional study design. Participants recruited were older adults (age ≥60 years) living in the community. Chronic musculoskeletal pain was assessed by specific questions regarding the presence of chronic LBP and knee OA. Depressive symptoms were assessed with the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. Multivariable regression model adjusted for potential confounders (i.e., age, sex, economic status, body composition, and physical activity) was used to investigate the association between chronic musculoskeletal pain and depressive symptoms. Separate analyses were also conducted for older adults with LBP and with knee OA.

Results: A total of 509 (69% women) older adults were recruited. The regression analysis showed that musculoskeletal pain was associated with higher depressive symptoms ($\beta$ = 2.52, 95% CI: 0.50 to 4.54; p-value < .05) compared with older adults without chronic musculoskeletal pain. Similarly, in the fully adjusted model, which included physical activity, LBP was associated with higher depressive symptoms ($\beta$ = 2.80, 95% CI: 0.82 to 4.79; p-value < .01). The association between knee OA and depressive symptoms was not statistically significant after adjusting for physical activity ($\beta$ = 2.00, 95% CI: -0.13 to 4.13; p-value = .06).

Conclusion: Older adults with chronic musculoskeletal pain have higher depressive symptoms scores, when compared to those without musculoskeletal pain. Physical activity does not seem to influence this association.

Objective: The study examined the association of various socioeconomic, demographic, health risk behavior, and social capital factors with the cognitive health status of older adults in India.

Methods: Data from the Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (LASI, 2017-18), wave-1 was used. Binary logistic regression was applied to explore the significant predictor variables of poor cognitive health status. Further, decomposition analysis was employed to explore the gender differences in cognitive health status.

Results: The results revealed that female older adults had a higher odds of poor cognitive health status than male older adults (aOR: 2.37; 99% CI: 1.97-2.85). Increasing years of age, not being in a marital union, lower levels of social capital, and the presence of health risk behavior increased the odds of poor cognitive health. Education had a protective effect against the decline in cognitive health. The decomposition analysis results indicated that the gender difference in educational attainment contributed largely to the gender inequality in poor cognitive health status.

Conclusions: The results suggest that gender equality in educational attainment could reduce the gender difference in cognitive health among male and female older adults to a large extent.

Objectives: evaluate the association between Metabolic Syndrome (MetS) and cognitive performance (global and in each domain) in community-dwelling older adults.

Methods: cross-sectional study with 544 participants (≥60 years). Cognition was assessed using the Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument - Short (CASI-S), evaluating four domains: memory, orientation, executive function, recall. MetS was identified considering five components: abdominal obesity, diabetes, hypertriglyceridemia, low HDL, and hypertension. Mann-Whitney test and Poisson regression models adjusted for age and education were used to assess the differences in cognition scores.

Results: Hypertensive participants had lower global cognition, and those with hypertriglyceridemia had lower memory scores; obese individuals reached lower executive function and higher recall scores. Diabetes was associated with worse recall in men, and low HDL to lower memory scores; hypertensive women had worse recall. In adjusted models, association between abdominal obesity, executive function and recall (total sample) remained significant (p = .003 and p = .048, respectively).

Conclusions: Global cognition was not associated to metabolic disorders, but obesity was associated to lower executive function and higher recall.

Clinical implications: Assessing each cognitive domain may be more sensitive in subjects with MetS components, and interaction between components, sex and education also must be considered to establish adequate care strategies for the older adults.

This study explored how age-related hearing loss and second language use relate to non-auditory lexical language abilities in 74 older adults (mean age 63; range 50-73). Participants completed a cognitive task (backwards digit span) and two lexical tasks: a verbal fluency task, which has a stronger cognitive component, and a vocabulary task, which has a lesser cognitive component. Our findings suggest that fundamental language skills are distinct from perceptual difficulties - at least in a lexical task with a lesser cognitive component. In the lexical task with a stronger cognitive component, we found evidence for a complex relation between age-related hearing loss and the frequency of second language use.

The General Practitioner Assessment of Cognition (GPCOG) was explicitly developed as a brief cognitive screening tool for general practitioners. It consists of a patient section testing cognition and an informant section asking historical questions. This study aimed to test the validity and reliability of the Turkish version of GPCOG-Tr on older Turkish adults. The study included two hundred thirty (n = 230) community-dwelling individuals aged at least 55. The GPCOG was translated, back-translated, and revised to determine the final GPCOG-Tr. The sample was divided into the patient group (with memory complaints) and the control group (without memory complaints). The GPCOG-Tr was compared against standard criteria for diagnosis of dementia (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - 5th edition), the Clinical Dementia Rating scale, the Mini-mental State Examination, The Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale-Cognitive (ADAS-Cog) subscale, and the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS). The reliability test was done on 30 participants after two weeks. The two-stage method of administering the GPCOG-Tr had a sensitivity of 85%, a specificity of 92%, a misclassification rate of 11.3%, and a positive predictive value of 92%. The test-retest correlation coefficients ranged from 0.86 to 0.98. The GPCOG-Tr total was at least equivalent to the MMSE and ADAS-Cog in detecting dementia. The GPCOG-Tr displayed solid psychometric properties, offering the general practitioners an efficient cognitive instrument for older Turkish people.