Abstract
 
The Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience (CamCAN; www.cam-can.org) includes a cohort of ~700 healthy adults aged 18-88 who kindly provided lifestyle, cognitive and neuroimaging (MRI+MEG) data. We have used these data to make many inferences about how age affects the relationship between various cognitive abilities and brain structure and function. In this talk, I will focus on attempts to relate lifestyle and cardiovascular health to cognition. One cognitive ability that declines rapidly with age is fluid intelligence (how quickly we can solve problems, eg in IQ tests). Using retrospective questionnaires, we found that mid-life activities (MAs) outside the workplace made a unique contribution to fluid intelligence in later-life (i.e., several decades later), above current age and education. Furthermore, these MAs moderated the relationship between brain structural health and fluid intelligence, conforming to a type of “cognitive reserve”. More recently, we have tried to identify the functional brain correlate of these MAs, such as degree of functional segregation of large-scale networks, or functional compensation during cognitive tasks. In parallel work, we have examined the relationship between fluid intelligence and cardiovascular latent variables extracted from blood pressure, mean and variability of heart-rate and BMI. It appears that pulse pressure is a critical factor, and that integrity of white-matter mediates the effect of pulse pressure on fluid intelligence (after adjusting for age). However many questions remain, e.g, concerning types of MAs, their effects on pulse pressure, and their (potentially delayed) effects on brain and cognition.