Helping Behaviors and Cognitive Functioning in Later Life: Linkages with Genetic Risks for Alzheimer's Disease and Disadvantaged Neighborhood Socioeconomic Status

项目摘要 迫切需要确定可改变的风险因素和干预方法，以帮助 预防或延缓阿尔茨海默病(AD)的发病。对此，多位研究人员提出 通过帮助他人进行亲社会参与应被视为应对AD的公共卫生干预 流行病。这一观点是基于积累的证据，表明正式的志愿服务 为志愿者提供广泛的健康益处，部分是通过影响神经生物系统 这也会影响AD的风险。尽管最近的审查表明没有确凿的证据，但一个规模较小但在不断增长的身体 关于志愿服务和认知结果之间联系的相关证据的研究结果得到了证实 来自随机对照试验，如巴尔的摩体验团。然而，早期关于亲社会的研究 晚年生活中的助人行为主要集中在正式的志愿服务上，而对认知助人行为知之甚少 直接向社区中的非家庭个人提供非正式帮助的好处，这可能比 与非洲和西班牙裔美国人相关，他们拥有更丰富的非正式服务社区的传统。 该项目的首要目标是发现两种形式的帮助行为之间存在联系的有力证据 (即正式的志愿服务和非正式的帮助)和更好的认知功能，以建立亲社会 将参与作为一种健康行为，可以降低AD的风险或推迟AD的发生。利用这一优势 来自NIA资助的健康和退休研究(1998-2020)的丰富纵向数据，我们解决了 遵循关键目标。首先，我们确定了帮助行为在多大程度上促进了更高水平的认知 功能和认知能力下降较慢，同时密切关注潜在的种族-民族差异 帮助的类型和认知结果之间的联系。我们采用了最近提出的不对称 准确估计转入(和退出)帮助的个人影响的建模方法 行为。随后，我们解开了由遗传风险因素驱动的认知快速下降的发展 AD与正常、年龄相关的认知功能的变化，并确定帮助的剂量反应 需要缓解由高遗传性AD风险加速的认知衰退。最后，我们将帮助定位于- 帮助行为经常发生的邻里语境中的认知联系和调查 帮助他人在多大程度上缓冲了不利和/或恶化的不利影响 社区社会经济状况，使用人口普查-地区水平数据进行评估。该研究团队包括一名新的 调查员和四名具有涵盖拟议项目所有方面的专业知识的顾问，因此该小组是 非常适合成功地实现创新的项目目标。预计该项目的收益率将很高。 奖励结果不仅是对科学文献的贡献，也是对发展战略的奖励 对于有效的、循证的、基于社区的AD干预计划，NIA的当务之急是。

Project Summary There is an urgent need to identify modifiable risk factors and intervention approaches that would help to prevent or delay the onset of Alzheimer's Disease (AD). In this regard, several researchers propose that prosocial engagement via helping others should be considered a public health intervention for tackling the AD epidemic. This perspective is based on the accumulated evidence demonstrating how formal volunteering confers a wide range of health benefits for the volunteer, in part through influencing neurobiological systems that also influence AD risk. Although recent reviews indicate inconclusive evidence, a small but growing body of correlational evidence for the link between volunteering and cognitive outcomes is corroborated by findings from randomized control trials, such as the Baltimore Experience Corps. However, earlier studies on prosocial helping behaviors in later life mostly focused on formal volunteering, while little is known about the cognitive benefits of informal helping given directly to non-household individuals in the community, which may be more relevant for African and Hispanic Americans with a richer tradition of informally serving their communities. The overarching goal of the project is to uncover robust evidence linking two forms of helping behaviors (i.e., formal volunteering, and informal helping) and better cognitive functioning so as to establish prosocial engagement as a health behavior that could reduce the risk or delay the onset of AD. Taking advantage of the rich longitudinal data from the NIA-funded Health and Retirement Study (1998-2020), we address the following key aims. First, we identify the extent to which helping behaviors promote higher levels of cognitive functioning and slower cognitive decline while paying close attention to potential racial-ethnic differences for the link between the type of helping and cognitive outcomes. We employ the recently-proposed asymmetric modeling approach to accurately estimate the within-person effects of transitioning into (and out of) helping behaviors. Subsequently, we disentangle rapid cognitive decline driven by genetic risk factors for developing AD from normal, age-related changes in cognitive functioning and identify the dose-response of helping needed to alleviate cognitive decline accelerated by high genetic AD risk. Finally, we situate the helping- cognition nexus within the neighborhood context in which helping behaviors often take place and investigate the extent to which helping others buffers detrimental effects of disadvantaged and/or deteriorating neighborhood socioeconomic status, assessed with Census-tract level data. The research team includes a new investigator and four consultants with expertise covering all facets of the proposed project, and thus the team is well-suited to successfully address the innovative set of project aims. The project is expected to yield high reward outcomes not only in terms of contributing to the scientific literature but also for developing strategies for effective, evidence-driven community-based AD intervention programs, an urgent priority of NIA.