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New study shows that people with generational longevity have better cognitive skills

May 26, 2021

A new study has shown that generational longevity in your family could mean that you have better cognitive skills.
Researchers of the study carried out a series of tests that dealt with memory, executive function, and critical thinking on aging participants.
They discovered that individuals with a history of longevity in their families performed better in cognitive tests than their spouses with a shorter lifespan history.

If you happen to have several family members that have lived well into their 70s and 80s, then you’re just in luck! According to a study carried out by researchers affiliated with Long Life Family Study (LLFS), they’ve discovered that people who come from a long line of individuals that exhibit longevity have greater cognitive function when compared to those whose relatives die younger. The study—which was published in the journal, Gerontology—also shows that individuals that come from long-living families exhibit slower cognitive decline over time. The Long Life Family Study collected data from more than 5,000 participants spread over 600 families. Researchers affiliated with the study followed these families for over 15 years. The study was exceptional in that it accepted individuals whose families had aging relatives well into their 70s, 80s, and even 90s. Since it became active in 2006, LLFS has enrolled participants primarily into two groups: long-lived siblings (known as the proband generation) as well as their children. Because these two groups share identical environmental features and factors, they are enrolled as the referent group. To measure cognitive performance, the researchers carried out a series of assessments across the study participants to test aspects of memory, executive function, and critical thinking. The researchers carried out two visits, each eight years apart. This gave them enough time to discover whether members exhibiting longevity had better baseline cognitive performance as compared to their spouses. Furthermore, they wanted to determine whether those with longevity had a slower pace of cognitive decline compared to their spouses. To explore this conundrum further, the LLFS researchers performed a series of neuropsychological tests on the participants. They then created a model that was used to determine the change in score of the tests from the first visit to the second visit. According to the co-author of the study—doctoral student Mengtian Du from the biostatistics department in the Boston University School of Public Health—the model was designed to give access to both “the cross-sectional effect of familial longevity at baseline visit and the longitudinal effect over follow-up time.” The results showed that participants hailing from generations of long-living families performed better than their spouses on two tests: one that dealt with symbol coding test—an experiment whereby participants attempted to match symbols that correspond to numbers while providing insight to psychomotor processing working, attention, speed, and memory. The second test was a paragraph recall test—where participants had to recall a short story in order to test their episodic memory. In both instances, the researchers noted that participants in the younger group—born after 1935—demonstrated a slower rate of cognitive decline especially on the symbol coding test when compared to their spouses. Here’s what main author, Stacy Andersen—and assistant professor of medicine at Boston University School of Medicine—had to say about their discovery: “This finding of a slower decline in processing speed is particularly remarkable because the younger generation is relatively young at an average age of 60 years and therefore these differences are unlikely to be due to neurodegenerative disease. Rather we are detecting differences in normal cognitive aging.” In sum, Andersen believes that people exhibiting familial longevity have greater resilience to cognitive aging compared to those that don’t. Hence, by analyzing families in the LLFS study, we can get vital information on features such as lifestyle habits, environmental factors, and other essential features that could go a long way to optimizing cognitive health for a longer lifespan.

References: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-05/buso-pwf050421.php

New study shows that people with generational longevity have better cognitive skills

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