Identifying factors underlying resilience to age-related cognitive decline

正常或健康的衰老与认知能力（如记忆力）的下降有关。一些生活方式因素会影响与年龄相关的认知能力下降的轨迹。然而，将中年生活方式与晚年认知联系起来的研究往往是相互矛盾的。此外，它通常不包括辨别跨多个认知领域的影响的措施。目前的项目旨在调查中年生活方式因素对一系列认知领域的影响，这些认知领域先前与年龄相关的衰退有关。该项目还将使用功能性磁共振成像（fMRI）来查明功能活动的差异，并阐明生活方式因素对与年龄相关的认知能力下降的影响的生物学机制。此外，感兴趣区域的功能活动将与任务表现相关联，以确定反应的差异对认知表现是有利还是有害。参与者样本将是中年人和老年人，他们可能从合作者Aviva的客户群中招募，以便应用存储的关于过去生活方式行为的自我报告数据。研究结果可以确定生活方式的改变，这将改善认知能力下降的轨迹，并增加我们对潜在影响机制的理解。随着老年人口的持续增长，了解我们如何促进成功的老龄化变得越来越重要。

Normal or healthy ageing is associated with a decline in cognitive capabilities such as memory. Several lifestyle factors influence the trajectory of age-related cognitive decline. However, research linking middle age lifestyle and cognition in later life is often conflicting. Furthermore, it does not typically include measures to discern the effects across multiple cognitive domains. The current project aims to investigate the effect of lifestyle factors at middle age on a range of cognitive domains previously associated with age-related decline. The project will also use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to pinpoint differences in functional activity and elucidate the biological mechanisms by which lifestyle factors confer their influence on age-related cognitive decline. Furthermore, the functional activity in regions of interest will be correlated with task performance to determine whether differences in response are beneficial or detrimental to cognitive performance. The participant sample will be middle-aged and older adults which may be recruited from the customer base of the collaborators, Aviva, to enable the application of stored self-reported data on past lifestyle behaviours. The research results could identify lifestyle modifications that will ameliorate the trajectory of cognitive decline and increase our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the effects. Understanding how we can promote successful ageing becomes ever more important as the older population continues to grow.