Preserving cognitive resilience in old age can prevent loss of cognition in old age. Given the long prodromal phase of cognitive loss, the significance of identifying midlife risk factors of late-life cognitive resilience may lead to better preventive strategies in the general population. The higher prevalence and incidence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) in the minority populations, especially African Americans, makes studying resilience in this population of high public health significance. Three areas of focus ? neuroimaging biomarkers, cognitive tests, and CVD risk factors in midlife will provide a better understanding of midlife factors that may be related to late-life cognitive resilience.
We aim to enroll 750 offspring whose parents were participants in the CHAP biracial population study with the following primary objective ? to test if higher parental cognitive resilience is associated with less MRI evidence of white matter, hippocampal, and cortical gray matter injury in the offspring, and to test if these associations are different by race/ethnicity and gender groups. One of the aims of the study is to identify the contributions of putative risk and protective factors over life span on cognitive resilience in the 10,342 participants in the parent CHAP study. No new data will be collected in the Parent Cohort. The second and third aims are to examine the relation of MRI neuroimaging biomarkers with cognitive tests and carotid femoral pulse wave velocity and systolic BP in the offspring cohort, and examine if these relationships are stronger among offspring whose parents have higher cognitive resilience, by race/ethnicity, gender, and by the APOE E4 allele. Such an intergenerational approach to cognitive resilience in a biracial population sample to study cognitive resilience is novel and provides a unique opportunity to improve our understanding of cognitive resilience across generations of Americans. This study also has the potential to make a large public health impact in potentially identifying early, mid, and late life factors of cognitive resilience leading to better preventive strategies in midlife.
The proposed intergenerational research study would increase our understanding of cognitive resilience in late-life older adults, and examines the relation of midlife biomarkers of brain and cardiovascular health in offspring and cognitive resilience in parent. Preserving cognitive resilience through early, mid, and late life biomarkers is a topic of high public health significance, since designing of preventive strategies through life course can offer stronger potential for slowing or reducing the risk of developing cognitive loss in late-life.
