Why Does Education Reduce Risk for Alzheimer’s?
One of the earliest and most consistent findings in the extensive research base on risk factors of Alzheimer’s is the observation that those with higher education levels are less likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Why would education protect against Alzheimer’s? If Alzheimer’s is a disease of the brain, why would people with more education be less likely to get it?
As it turns out, there are two major explanations, and both may be partly right.
The first and most common explanation is based on an idea called cognitive reserve. The idea behind this is that Alzheimer’s is diagnosed when someone has clearly developed memory problems as well as problems in some other areas of mental or personal functioning. People with higher levels of education probably function at somewhat higher levels in memory and other cognitive domains. The distance between where they start and the point at which they have recognizable decline is greater than for people whose baseline isn’t quite as high. When their functioning declines, it takes longer for them to reach the point where doctors will say they have Alzheimer’s.
The second explanation is, I think, more interesting because it gives us a direction to go in trying to prevent Alzheimer’s disease and maybe cognitive decline more generally. People with higher levels of education may also be more intellectually active as they get older. We know that what kinds of things people do on an everyday basis is related to how likely it is that they’ll get Alzheimer’s. People who have active social lives and spend time doing intellectually challenging things are less likely to get Alzheimer’s. And people with higher levels of education may do more of these things.
This raises the question of which comes first. Is that people with more education do things that make it less likely that they’ll get Alzheimer’s, or is that people who are less likely to get Alzheimer’s like to do intellectually stimulating activities. Since most of the research is done in a way that won’t less us decide which causes which, this question is still not answered completely. We do know, however, that certain kinds of mentally stimulating activities (as well as improved physical fitness) make changes in the brain. These changes in the brain are the kind of things that should improve people’s abilities, and decrease their chances for developing Alzheimer’s disease.
Does this mean that if you don’t have a high school diploma, a college degree, or a graduate education that you’re doomed to get Alzheimer’s? Nope. If you look closely at almost any of the risk factor studies, the actual change in risk for Alzheimer’s disease is fairly small, even if it’s statistically significant. It does mean that if you’re looking to do something to reduce your risk of Alzheimer’s, following a brain fitness program might be able to reduce your chances of getting memory or other cognitive problems.
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Mindfulness meditation as practiced over a long period by experts makes clear changes in someone’s brain function. But what about those of us who don’t have a few years to sit in a monastery in the Himalayas? A new study shows that even brief meditation practice can improve attention.
Researchers at Wake Forest University studied whether just four days of training (at just 20 minutes a day) could make a difference in participants’ mood, energy, and cognition. Undergraduate students (average age 22 years) either participated in the meditation sessions or spent a similar amount of time sitting quietly and listening to an audio book.
Participants in the meditation condition showed decreases in anxiety and improvements in several mental processing tasks compared to those in the audio book group. The meditators’ performance on one aspect of a working memory task (how many answers they got correct in a row) suggested that they may have improved their attention.
This is a small and very preliminary study that extends others’ work on meditation and the brain.It shows that even brief meditation practice can make a difference. you don’t have to be a Buddhist monk to learn to still your mind and pay better attention. Paying attention may be one of the most important things you can do to improve your brain’s functioning.
Reference:
Zeidan F et al.(in press) Mindfulness meditation improves cognition: Evidence of brief mental training. Consciousness and Cognition, doi:10.1016/j.concog.2010.03.014
I saw an interesting blog post yesterday evening on the site of the Huffington Post about the potential benefits of meditation – or at least about what one woman thinks might be the benefits. Priscilla Warner writes about the contrast between Tibetan monks’ apparent calm, evident even on brain scans, and her own anxiety disorder. Ms. Warner says that she suffers from panic disorder, a severe form of anxiety in which a person can have multiple anxiety attacks every day, even in the middle of the night. Her post is titled “I Want the Brain of a Monk” Although most people don’t suffer from anxiety this severe, many people have symptoms of anxiety. And research has consistently shown that higher levels of anxiety are related to more memory problems.
What’s the relation to brain fitness? In my brain fitness class, I often mention the usefulness of meditation in helping reduce stress and anxiety, both of which have negative effects on memory. You don’t have to go to Tibet to get the benefits of meditation. If you simply take 10 minutes several times a day to break in to the ongoing rush of getting things done, you’ve made a start. Use those 10 minutes to sit quietly, relax your muscles, and breathe deeply.
If you do that every day for two weeks, I think you’ll notice that you feel calmer and better able to focus. And if you’re better able to focus, you will be better able to pay attention and remember things.
Although many people are excited about the potential for using computers to train their brains, we shouldn’t forget that other techniques have been used to the train the brain for many centuries. I’m thinking about the large number of techniques for meditation. While free computer software still requires an investment in a computer, meditation only asks you to sit or lie quietly and focus your mind.
A recently-published study shows parts of the brain in long-term meditators are larger than the same parts of the brain in people who don’t meditate. The article by Eileen Luders and her colleagues appeared in a recent issue of the journal Neuroimage (Vol. 45, No. 3, pp. 672-678, April 15, 2009). The study showed that portions of the orbitofrontal cortex and the hippocampus were larger in persons who had been regular meditators for 5 or more years. The study is interesting because the parts of the brain that were larger are often thought to be important in helping people keep themselves emotionally balanced.
A number of strategies are likely to be helpful for meditators. There has been a great deal of interest over the last several years in mindfulness meditation. Researchers have studied how it can be used in reducing anxiety and depression. Mindfulness is based on Buddhist meditation (for a brief article, click here) but you don’t have to be a Buddhist to practice meditation. In fact, one of the most important persons who has promoted mindfulness is Jon Kabat-Zinn, a researcher at the University of Massachusetts. You can see a video presentation by him on YouTube by clicking here.
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