Latinos and Alzheimer’s Disease: What Is It, and How Do We Prevent, Delay, or Manage It? View Digital Media
Presentation in a Themed Panel William Vega
Alzheimer’s remains an untreated and fatal brain disease affecting up to one-third of Latinos over 80, with critical implications for victims, scientists, medical and assistive services, and social networks. The presentation discusses differential patterns of cognitive decline of older adults in the presence or absence of AD, and implications for successful primary prevention, risk reduction, and earlier detection and management of Latinos with AD. The presentation concludes with an overview of the impact of AD on caregivers, family support systems, financial resources, and identification of actions required to cure AD in Latino populations.
Acculturation in Context, Cognitive, and Cardiovascular Health in Older Latinos (Online Only) View Digital Media
Presentation in a Themed Panel Melissa Lamar
Latinos are one of the fastest growing minoritized populations in the US at risk for Alzheimer’s dementia. In addition to being at the forefront of the dementia epidemic, Latinos have some of the lowest levels of overall cardiovascular health. Research documenting how cardiovascular health impacts cognition and brain aging in Latinos does not completely account for Latinos’ disparities in brain aging; investigating culturally-relevant contributors is the logical next step. Acculturation, the process by which Latinos adapt to the US and potentially adopt its values and practices, has been shown to be an important contributor to overall health in Latinos; however, the literature is inconsistent. This may be due, in part, to the fact that acculturation is not a static, linear process but rather a dynamic exchange between Latinos and other members of society that emerges from and is reinforced by broader socioenvironmental determinants vital to a process increasingly called ‘acculturation in context’. I will discuss acculturation in context as a framework for investigating brain aging in older Latinos. I will share findings from our longitudinal study investigating the relationships between acculturation in context, cognitive, and cardiovascular health in approximately 200 older Latinos and how acculturation in context modifies the well-documented relationships between cardiovascular health and cognitive decline in these same individuals. Incorporation of broader socioenvironmental determinants with established acculturation factors has the potential to provide a more comprehensive understanding of Latinos’ health disparities in brain aging, and outline risk and resilience factors to target in future intervention studies.
Deconstructing Bilingualism, AD-biomarkers, and Brain Reserve View Digital Media
Presentation in a Themed Panel Miguel Arce Renteria
While some studies find that bilingualism confers reserve and resilience to cognitive aging, several other investigators do not find a bilingual advantage on cognition. Methodological differences such as treating bilinguals as a monolithic group when there are within-group differences in key aspects of bilingualism (i.e., age of acquisition, proficiency, frequency of bilingual language use) may explain these inconsistencies. In addition, there is inconsistent accounting for environmental and sociocultural factors (i.e., immigrant status) that influence the ability or opportunity to become bilingual. Moreover, it is unclear whether bilingualism confers brain reserve such as by weakening the association of aging on brain. The current presentation will discuss implications of diverse linguistic characteristics of bilinguals (i.e., age of acquisition, proficiency, frequency of bilingual language use) on cognitive functioning in a sample of community-dwelling immigrant Spanish-English bilingual and monolingual Latinx adults. Furthermore, we will evaluate whether bilingualism and its aspects modify the association of aging on cortical thinning of Alzheimer’s disease cortical signature regions. Lastly, we will provide a framework on how to incorporate bilingualism using a lifecourse approach to address appropriate sociocultural confounds in cognitive aging research.
Personality Predictors of Cognitive Decline, Dementia, and Cognitive Resilience View Digital Media
Presentation in a Themed Panel Eileen Graham, Kathryn L. Jackson, Daniel Mroczek
There are considerable individual differences in the rates of cognitive decline and the presence of cognitive resilience in later adulthood. Cognitive resilience is defined as the discordance between a person’s actual and expected cognition given their neuropathology and can be estimated by extracting residuals from a model regressing cognition on neuropathology. Big Five personality traits are among the factors that may account for some of these individual difference in cognitive decline, and may also predict cognitive resilience. The current presentation will share results from two papers that investigated first, whether personality traits were associated with trajectories of cognitive decline, and whether these associations varied before and after dementia diagnosis. Second, we explored whether personality traits were associated with resilience to neuropathologic burden. Across study aims was a focus on replicability and generalizability, and analyses were pre-registered and conducted in up to four independent longitudinal studies. As expected, we detected evidence for cognitive decline in all samples. Results indicated that neuroticism and openness were associated with total cognitive function. and openness was associated with decline post dementia diagnosis. Higher neuroticism was associated with greater vulnerability to pathology, and higher conscientiousness was associated with less cognitive decline relative to the amount of pathology, or greater resilience. These results suggest that personality could be included in resilience-based prevention models and interventions aimed at optimizing cognitive function across older adulthood.
