Sex-based memory advantages and cognitive aging: a challenge to the cognitive reserve construct?

ABSTRACT: Education and related proxies for cognitive reserve (CR) are confounded by associations with environmental factors that correlate with cerebrovascular disease possibly explaining discrepancies between studies examining their relationships to cognitive aging and dementia. In contrast, sex-related memory differences may be a better proxy. Since they arise developmentally, they are less likely to reflect environmental confounds. Women outperform men on verbal and men generally outperform women on visuospatial memory tasks. Furthermore, memory declines during the preclinical stage of AD, when it is clinically indistinguishable from normal aging. To determine whether CR mitigates age-related memory decline, we examined the effects of gender and APOE genotype on longitudinal memory performances.

SUBMITTER: Caselli RJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4785799 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature