Educational inequalities in aging-related declines in fluid cognition and the onset of cognitive pathology

AbstractBackgroundEducation has been robustly associated with cognitive reserve and dementia, but not with the rate of cognitive aging, resulting in some confusion about the mechanisms of cognitive aging. This study uses longitudinal data to differentiate between trajectories indicative of healthy versus pathologic cognitive aging.MethodsParticipants included 9401 Health and Retirement Study respondents aged ≥55 years who completed cognitive testing regularly over 17.3 years until most recently in 2012. Individual-specific random change-point modeling was used to identify age of incident pathologic decline; acceleration is interpreted as indicating likely onset of pathologic decline when it is significant and negative.ResultsThese methods detect incident dementia diagnoses with specificity/sensitivity of 89.3%/44.3%, 5.6 years before diagnosis. Each year of education was associated with 0.09 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.087–0.096; P < .001) standard deviation higher baseline cognition and delayed onset of cognitive pathology (hazard ratio, 0.98; 95% CI, 0.96–0.99; P = .006).ConclusionsLongitudinal random change-point modeling was able to reliably identify incident dementia. Accounting for incident cognitive pathology, we find that education predicts cognitive capability and delayed onset pathologic declines

3,4-diaminopyridine for the treatment of Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome

The Lambert Eaton myasthenic syndrome (LEMS) is an autoimmune disease in which antibodies against voltage-gated calcium channels inhibit cholinergic neurotransmission LEMS is clinically characterized by muscle weakness and autonomic dysfunction 3 4-diaminopyridine (3 4-DAP) blocks potassium channels in nerve terminals resulting in an increase in acetylcholine release This article describes the four randomized placebo-controlled trials of 3 4-DAP in patients with LEMS All trials demonstrated a significant effect on muscle strength and compound muscle action potential amplitude Furthermore the safety and tolerability of 3 4-DAP are reviewed The side effects of 3 4-DAP are generally mild and most frequently consist of paresthesias but epileptic seizures and arrhythmias have been described in patients using high doses Given the efficacy and safety of 3 4-DAP in LEMS, this drug is the mainstay for symptomatic treatment of LEMSStress-related psychiatric disorders across the life spa

Level of processing and reaction time in young and middle-aged adults and the effect of education

The first aim was to examine whether differences in reaction time (RT) between younger (25-35 years) and middle-aged (50-60 years) individuals increase with depth of processing. The second aim was to examine whether this increase is less pronounced in higher educated individuals. Processing of words at the perceptual, phonological, and semantic level was induced by a case decision, an e detection, and a living/nonliving discrimination task, respectively. RTs increased with age and level of processing. However, there were no interactions between age, task, and education, suggesting that different processing levels are equally sensitive to slowing in midlife and that education was not a moderating factor. Although no overall age by level of processing interaction was found, there were age by stimulus type interactions in the deeper processing tasks. First, age-related differences in RT for words containing the letter e were smaller than for words without the letter e, suggesting that middle-aged adults were slower than younger adults in performing a terminating search strategy. Second, age-related differences in RT for words referring to living items were smaller than for words referring to nonliving items. This suggests that middle-aged adults compared to younger adults have reduced access to specific semantic categories. Taken together, the results show that vulnerability to age-related cognitive decline already exists in middle age

Apolipoprotein E Genotype and educational attainment predict the rate of cognitive decline in normal aging? A 12-year follow-up of the Maastricht Aging Study

OBJECTIVE: We investigated suspected longitudinal interaction effects of apolipoprotein E (APOE) genotype and educational attainment on cognitive decline in normal aging. METHOD: Our sample consisted of 571 healthy, nondemented adults aged between 49 and 82 years. Linear mixed-models analyses were performed with four measurement time points: baseline, 3-year, 6-year, and 12-year follow-up. Covariates included age at baseline, sex, and self-perceived physical and mental health. Dependent measures were global cognitive functioning (Mini-Mental State Examination; Folstein, Folstein, & McHugh, 1975), Stroop performance (Stroop Color-Word Test; Van der Elst, Van Boxtel, Van Breukelen, & Jolles, 2006a), set-shifting performance (Concept Shifting Test; Van der Elst, Van Boxtel, Van Breukelen, & Jolles, 2006b), cognitive speed (Letter-Digit Substitution Test; Van der Elst, Van Boxtel, Van Breukelen, & Jolles, 2006c), verbal learning (Verbal Learning Test: Sum of five trials; Van der Elst, Van Boxtel, Van Breukelen, & Jolles, 2005), and long-term memory (Verbal Learning Test: Delayed recall). RESULTS: We found only faint evidence that older, high-educated carriers of the APOE-epsilon4 allele (irrespective of zygosity) show a more pronounced decline than younger, low-educated carriers and noncarriers (irrespective of educational attainment). Moreover, this outcome was confined to concept-shifting performance and was especially observable between 6- and 12-year follow-ups. No protective effects of higher education were found on any of the six cognitive measures. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that the combination of APOE-epsilon4 allele and high educational attainment may be a risk factor for accelerated cognitive decline in older age, as has been reported before, but only to a very limited extent. Moreover, we conclude that, within the cognitive reserve framework, education does not have significant protective power against age-related cognitive decline

Nalevering van fosfor naar het oppervlaktewater vanuit de waterbodem : metingen in een veengebied in de Krimpenerwaard

Het oppervlaktewater in de veenweidepolder de Krimpenerwaard kenmerkt zich door hoge fosforconcentraties in het zomerhalfjaar, gemiddeld vijf keer hoger dan de Kaderrichtlijn Water norm van 0,22 mg/l. De hoge concentraties kunnen niet worden verklaard door de bronnen die het oppervlaktewater dan belasten. De hypothese is dat de waterbodem de hoge concentraties in de zomer veroorzaakt door in het winterhalfjaar fosfor te adsorberen, fosfor afkomstig van de bronnen die het oppervlaktewater dan belasten, om dit fosfor in het zomerhalfjaar door desorptie na te leveren aan het oppervlaktewater. Deze hypothese is onderzocht door op een aantal locaties in de Krimpenerwaard de waterbodem te bemonsteren en te analyseren op het vermogen om fosfor na te leveren. Dit vermogen blijkt groot te zijn, meer dan voldoende om de hoge fosforconcentraties in het zomerhalfjaar te veroorzaken

Interaction effects of education and health status on cognitive change: A 6-year follow-up of the Maastricht Aging Study

Objectives: The aim of this study was to test for interactions between education and health status (i.e., physical, social, and psychological functioning) with respect to baseline cognitive performance and change over 6 years. Method: Longitudinal data from the Maastricht Aging Study of 1344 men and women aged 24-47 and 49-77 were used. Results: Education by health interactions were restricted to the younger group. The components of health status that most consistently interacted with education were physical functioning on cognitive performance at baseline and physical and psychological functioning on cognitive change. Conclusion: These results indicate that high education attenuates age-related decline and lower baseline performance incurred by low health status in persons younger than 50

Preparing fingers within and between hands: examining the maximal preparation benefit in older age

Previous research has demonstrated an age-related deficit in the preparation of finger responses. A key question is whether the age-related deficit reflects differences in speed of preparation or differences in the maximal preparation benefit that can be attained given sufficiently long preparation intervals. The present study examined this issue by asking a group of younger and older adults to perform the finger-cueing task with four, relatively long, preparation intervals that varied randomly across trials. Reaction time results demonstrated that older adults were deficient in preparing two fingers on two hands at the two shortest preparation intervals, but not at the two longest ones. This outcome suggests that, with randomised preparation intervals, older adults require more time than younger adults to achieve the maximal level of between-hands preparation

Nalevering van fosfor naar het oppervlaktewater vanuit de waterbodem : metingen in een veengebied in de Krimpenerwaard

Het oppervlaktewater in de veenweidepolder de Krimpenerwaard kenmerkt zich door hoge fosforconcentraties in het zomerhalfjaar, gemiddeld vijf keer hoger dan de Kaderrichtlijn Water norm van 0,22 mg/l. De hoge concentraties kunnen niet worden verklaard door de bronnen die het oppervlaktewater dan belasten. De hypothese is dat de waterbodem de hoge concentraties in de zomer veroorzaakt door in het winterhalfjaar fosfor te adsorberen, fosfor afkomstig van de bronnen die het oppervlaktewater dan belasten, om dit fosfor in het zomerhalfjaar door desorptie na te leveren aan het oppervlaktewater. Deze hypothese is onderzocht door op een aantal locaties in de Krimpenerwaard de waterbodem te bemonsteren en te analyseren op het vermogen om fosfor na te leveren. Dit vermogen blijkt groot te zijn, meer dan voldoende om de hoge fosforconcentraties in het zomerhalfjaar te veroorzaken

SpikeCaKe: Semi-analytic nonparametric Bayesian inference for spike-spike neuronal connectivity

Item does not contain fulltextIn this paper we introduce a semi-analytic variational framework for approximating the posterior of a Gaussian processes coupled through non-linear emission models. While the semi-analytic method can be applied to a large class of models, the present paper is devoted to the analysis of causal connectivity between biological spiking neurons. Estimating causal connectivity between spiking neurons from measured spike sequences is one of the main challenges of systems neuroscience. This semi-analytic method exploits the tractability of GP regression when the membrane potential is observed. The resulting posterior is then marginalized analytically in order to obtain the posterior of the response functions given the spike sequences alone. We validate our methods on both simulated data and real neuronal recordings.International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics (AISTATS) 2019 (Naha, Okinawa, Japan, April 16 - 18, 2019

SpikeCaKe: Semi-analytic nonparametric Bayesian inference for spike-spike neuronal connectivity

In this paper we introduce a semi-analytic variational framework for approximating the posterior of a Gaussian processes coupled through non-linear emission models. While the semi-analytic method can be applied to a large class of models, the present paper is devoted to the analysis of causal connectivity between biological spiking neurons. Estimating causal connectivity between spiking neurons from measured spike sequences is one of the main challenges of systems neuroscience. This semi-analytic method exploits the tractability of GP regression when the membrane potential is observed. The resulting posterior is then marginalized analytically in order to obtain the posterior of the response functions given the spike sequences alone. We validate our methods on both simulated data and real neuronal recordings