Search

Communities across the globe are faced with a rapidly aging society, where age is the main risk factor for cognitive decline and development of Alzheimer's and related diseases. Despite extensive research, there have been no successful treatments yet. A rare group of individuals called "super-agers" have been noted to thrive with their exceptional ability to maintain a healthy brain and normal cognitive function even in old age. Studying their traits, lifestyles, and environments may provide valuable insight. This study used a data-driven approach to identify potential super-agers among 7121 UK Biobank participants and found that these individuals have the highest total brain volume, best cognitive performance, and lowest functional connectivity. The researchers suggest a novel hypothesis that these super-agers possess enhanced neural processing efficiency that increases with age and introduce a definition of the "neural efficiency index." Furthermore, several other types of aging were identified and significant structural–functional differences were observed between them, highlighting the benefit of research efforts in personalized medicine and precision nutrition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aging has often been characterized by progressive cognitive decline in memory and especially executive function. Yet some adults, aged 80 years or older, are "super-agers" that exhibit cognitive performance like younger adults. It is unknown if there are adults in mid-life with similar superior cognitive performance ("positive-aging") versus cognitive decline over time and if there are blood biomarkers that can distinguish between these groups. Among 1303 participants in UK Biobank, latent growth curve models classified participants into different cognitive groups based on longitudinal fluid intelligence (FI) scores over 7–9 years. Random Forest (RF) classification was then used to predict cognitive trajectory types using longitudinal predictors including demographic, vascular, bioenergetic, and immune factors. Feature ranking importance and performance metrics of the model were reported. Despite model complexity, we achieved a precision of 77% when determining who would be in the "positive-aging" group (n = 563) vs. cognitive decline group (n = 380). Among the top fifteen features, an equal number were related to either vascular health or cellular bioenergetics but not demographics like age, sex, or socioeconomic status. Sensitivity analyses showed worse model results when combining a cognitive maintainer group (n = 360) with the positive-aging or cognitive decline group. Our results suggest that optimal cognitive aging may not be related to age per se but biological factors that may be amenable to lifestyle or pharmacological changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aggression and violence are social behaviors that exact a significant toll on human societies. Individuals with aggressive tendencies display deficits in effortful control, particularly in affectively charged situations. However, not all individuals with poor effortful control are aggressive. This study uses event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded from a large sample (n = 75 undergraduates) to decompose the chronology of neural mechanisms underlying the ability to effortfully-control behavior, and then explores whether deficits in these cognitive functions might then lead to aggressive behavior. This study investigated which ERPs moderate the effortful control - aggression association. We examined three successive ERP components, the P2, N2, and P3, which have been associated with attentional orienting, response conflict, and working memory updating, for stimuli that required effortful control. N2 amplitudes were larger for trials requiring a switch from a preplanned action strategy than trials where a preplanned action strategy was followed. Furthermore, results indicated that N2 activation, but not P2 or P3 activation, moderated the relationship between effortful control and aggression. Our results suggest that small (less negative) N2s moderate the association between effortful control and aggression. These effects were present only in negative contexts, and only for high-conflict trials. Results suggest that individual differences in neural processing efficiency contributes to the execution of effortfully controlled behavior and avoidance of aggression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]