Participation in Cognitively Stimulating Activities and Risk of Incident Alzheimer Disease
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Open Access
- 13 February 2002
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Medical Association (AMA) in JAMA
- Vol. 287 (6) , 742-748
- https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.287.6.742
Abstract
Alzheimer disease (AD) is the leading cause of dementia in older persons, but few risk factors for the disease have been identified. Frequent participation in cognitively stimulating activities has been hypothesized to reduce risk of AD,1-3 but this hypothesis has not been tested prospectively in longitudinal studies of incident disease. Support for the hypothesis now comes mainly from retrospective case-control studies suggesting that mid-life cognitive activity is associated with disease risk4,5 and from cross-sectional research showing an association between frequency of cognitive activity and level of cognitive function in old age.6-8 In the current study, we used a previously established measure of frequency of participation in common cognitive activities8 and tested its association with incident AD and decline in cognitive function in a large cohort of older Catholic clergy members examined annually for up to 7 years.Keywords
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