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Spousal bereavement is associated with health declines and increased mortality risk, but its specific impact on physical and cognitive capabilities is less studied. A historical cohort study design was applied including married Tromsø study participants (N=5739) aged 50-70 years with baseline self-reported overall health and health-related factors and measured capability (grip strength, finger tapping, digit symbol coding, and short-term recall) at follow-up. Participants had data from Tromsø4 (1994-1995) and Tromsø5 (2001), or Tromsø6 (2007-2008) and Tromsø7 (2015-2016). Propensity score matching, adjusted for baseline confounders (and baseline capability in a subset), was used to investigate whether spousal bereavement was associated with poorer subsequent capability. Spousal bereavement occurred for 6.2% on average 3.7 years (SD 2.0) before the capability assessment. There were no significant bereavement effects on subsequent grip strength, immediate recall, or finger-tapping speed. Without adjustment for baseline digit symbol coding test performance, there was a negative significant effect on the digit symbol coding test (ATT -1.33; 95% confidence interval -2.57, -0.10), but when baseline digit symbol coding test performance was taken into account in a smaller subsample, using the same set of matching confounders, there was no longer any association (in the subsample ATT changed from -1.29 (95% CI -3.38, 0.80) to -0.04 (95% CI -1.83, 1.75). The results in our study suggest that spousal bereavement does not have long-term effects on the intrinsic capacity components physical or cognition capability to a notable degree., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Research on cross-domain couplings between sensorimotor and cognitive functions in older adults has gained momentum during recent years. Results of most studies point to increasing interdependencies between the two functional domains with advancing adult age. The causes of this increase are complex and show dynamic interactions across adult development. This review integrates experimental, correlational, and neurophysiological evidence, with an eye on implications for maintaining an independent and mobile lifestyle in old age.

Postural control in everyday life is generally accompanied by posture-unrelated cognitive activity. Thus, mild forms of dual-tasking postural control are the norm rather than the exception. Based on this consideration and available evidence, we propose and empirically examined, in young and old adults, a non-monotonic, U-shaped relation between the efficacy of postural control and concurrent cognitive demands that reflect opposing trends of the effects of attention focus and attentional resource competition. When instructed to perform an easy cognitive task that presumably shifted the focus of attention away from posture control, the center of body pressure (COP) excursions decreased both in young and older adults relative to a single-task baseline where the focus of attention was explicitly directed towards the postural control task itself. However, when performing more demanding cognitive tasks, older adults showed increased COP displacements, in line with the predicted U-shape function, whereas young adults did not. We outline mechanisms linking postural control to cognitive demand and suggest routes for future investigation.