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Aging: Flip Side to Education Is Seen in Dementia
By Eric Nagourney, The New York Times
November 6, 2007
People with more years of schooling appear to suffer the symptoms of dementia later than others who have it — but once it does come, it proceeds more quickly, researchers say.
The study found that for each additional year of formal education, the onset of memory loss was delayed by more than two months. The report, led by Charles B. Hall of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, appeared in the Oct. 23 issue of Neurology.
The researchers based their findings on a study that began following the health of 488 people, ages 75 to 85, in the early 1980s. This study looked at 117 of them who had dementia.
The study suggests there may be a flip side to the benefits that education brings to the brain when it comes to memory loss. People with a lot of schooling are believed to develop what is known as cognitive reserve.
“Because education is associated with cognitive reserve,” the study said, “more pathology must accumulate before cognitive declined accelerates.” But once the effects of dementia begin, they move more rapidly, because the condition is more advanced, the researchers said. More education may also mean that early signs of a dementia problem are masked.
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