According to a new study,mental decline sets in by the age of 45, much earlier than previously thought.

Experts said that efforts to prevent dementia should start in middle age, as the most comprehensive study to date found that people’s cognitive powers are already waning by their mid-40s. Previously scientists had believed that there was no significant degeneration before the age of 60.

Poor cognitive status is perhaps the single most disabling condition in old age. As life expectancy continues to increase, understanding cognitive aging will be one of the challenges of this century.

Memory, reason and comprehension tests conducted on 7,000 British civil servants over a decade found decaying cognitive abilities even among the youngest in the sample, who were 45 at the start of the research. People in their late 40s saw their scores in mental reasoning tests decline by an average of 3.6 per cent by the time they were retested ten years later, according to research from the Whitehall II study— a follow-on to the Whitehall study, which also looked at civil servants — published in the British Medical Journal.

Anne Corbett, Research Manager of the Alzheimer’s Society said: “This large, important study adds vital information to the debate over when cognitive decline begins. However, the study does not tell us whether any of these people went on to develop dementia, nor how feasible it would be for GPs to detect these early changes.

“More research is now needed to help us fully understand how measurable changes in the brain can help us improve diagnosis of dementia.” ~ The Times

Source: The Times Whitehall II Study

Today, one-in-five Americans finds his or her spouse via online dating websites, but according to Drexel researchers, marriage isn’t the only measure of success among people looking for love in cyberspace.
Rachel Magee and Christopher Mascaro, both second-year Ph.D students in The iSchool at Drexel, College of Information Science and Technology, and their advisor Dr. Sean P. Goggins, completed a study that takes a closer look at the success stories of online daters. Their results point toward a more accurate interpretation of why people decide to use online dating technology, why they choose a specific site and what they consider a successful online dating experience.

“We each had used online dating sites, and were both fascinated with how and why people use these services,” Magee said “We started to look at the research out there, and realized that what was missing was research into what constitutes successful online dating experiences. This is an extremely important part of most people’s lives, and we wanted to look at the big picture.” [continue reading…]

New research links “silent strokes”—small spots of dead brain cells, found in about 1 of 4 older adults—to memory loss in the elderly. “The new aspect of this study of memory loss in the elderly is that it examines silent strokes and hippocampal shrinkage simultaneously,” explained researchers at the Columbia University Medical Center in the January 3 Neurology. For the study, 658 people aged 65 and older and free of dementia were given MRI brain scans and tests that measured memory, language, speed at processing information, and visual perception. A total of 174 of the participants had silent strokes.

The study found people with silent strokes scored worse on memory tests than those without silent strokes.

“Given that conditions like Alzheimer’s disease are defined mainly by memory problems, our results may lead to further insight into what causes symptoms and the development of new interventions for prevention…. Our results also support stroke prevention as a means for staving off memory problems,” said the researchers.

Read more about recent research on the relationship between stroke and cognitive decline in Psychiatric News.

Source: American Psychiatric Association