Education promotes quick memory loss

After the diagnosis of "acquired dementia (dementia)", highly educated people lose their memory much faster than patients with a lower level of education. Such a conclusion is contained in a study, which is published on October 23, publishes a medical journal Neurology , published by the American Academy of Neurology.

The observations on the basis of which this conclusion was made, summarized the experience of 117 patients (from the total number of a group of 488 people - the so -called Bronx Anging Study), in which the development of dementia was diagnosed. For an average of six years, each participant in the experiment was offered annual tests (Buschke Selective Reminding Test - a Tesh BUSKA for selective memorization), designed to evaluate the cognitive abilities of patients. In terms of their education, patients presented almost the entire possible spectrum - from less than three elementary school classes to graduate school.

It turned out that each additional year of systematic education allowed to delay the beginning of a period of rapidly accelerated memory capabilities caused by progressive dementia to about two and a half months. Well, the fact that poorly educated people are significantly risk of getting Alzheimer's disease (this is a degenerative disease of the brain, which is one of the most common forms of acquired dementia) can already be considered a well -known fact. It would seem that in this case you can only be proud of a good education. However, as soon as the process of progressive decay of intelligence became an indisputable fact, more educated people found that each additional year of their training by about 4 percent increased the rate of degradation of memory and other cognitive abilities. Previous studies also have already shown that patients with the highest level of education lose their memory the faster after they are diagnosed with dementia.

“The higher level of education delays the beginning of dementia, but as soon as it all begins, the accelerated memory loss is manifested faster for the most educated people,” says one of the authors of the Charles Hall research from Albert Einstein College of Medicine (New York). - Our study shows that the rate of memory reduction in a person with 16 years of systematic education is 50 percent exceed memory loss in people with four classes. "

For example, a college graduate with 16 years of education, in whom dementia was diagnosed at 85 years, should have experienced an accelerated loss of memory almost four years before, at 81, while a person only with four years of education, who was also diagnosed at 85 years, would begin to experience a slower loss of memory at the age of 79, six years before the diagnosis.

The rapid regression in highly educated people can be explained by the fact that they simply have a larger reserve, reserve, their brain retains the ability to perform its functions even if it has already caused great damage. That is why dementia in such patients is often diagnosed with delay - as soon as all additional reserves are spent, and the brain will no longer be able to somehow compensate for irreversible painful changes. Then the symptoms will appear in all its unsightness.

Hall claims that this is the first such work that confirmed the most important forecasts of the effects of the cognitive reserve in people with preclinical dementia. He also notes that the disadvantage of this study can be called its retrospective in nature. Participants in the experiment were born between 1894 and 1908, and their styles of life and education may have fundamental differences from those people who are now entering the same age range.

*Sources: *

Educated People who Develop Dementia Lose Memory At Faster Rate - Press Room - American Academy of Neurology

MORE EDUCATED PEOPLE WHO Develop DEMENTIA Lose Their Memory Faster - Aecom News Releases

Education Delays Acclerated Decline on a memory test in persons who develop dementia - CB HALL, PhD, C. Derby, PhD, A. Levalley, MS, MJ Katz, J. Verghese, MD, MS And Rb Lipton, MD

Links:

Systematics of dementia syndromes

Alzheimer's disease threatens to a lesser extent to people with a high level of education

Older people suffer from dementia

American Academy of Neurology: A religious person is sick less often