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Alzheimer's Progresses Faster in Educated People
Nrbelex writes "Bloomberg news is reporting that 'High levels of education speeds up the progression of Alzheimer's disease, according to a study published in next month's issue of the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. Mental agility dropped every year among Alzheimer's disease patients with each additional year of education, leading to an additional 0.3 percent deterioration, the researchers from the Columbia University Medical Center in New York found. The speed of thought processes and memory were particularly affected.'"
The first thought that came into my mind when I read this: if you have more (mental ability) and the end result of Alzheimer is the same for all people, then you will lose it (mental ability) faster...
The more you put in the more you can lose. I for one am calling for a general ban on learning.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
...educated people have more to forget.
Let the Jokes Begin!
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
So the disease is less damaging if you're more stupid than the average college graduate. Is that why they been dumbing down K-12 education for years to protect the general public's health?
Regardless of education, the disease takes the same amount of time to degrade you to a mindless, insensitive clod with the same lower mental ability?
Braking from 100 km/h to 0 in 5 seconds is a harder deceleration than from 30 km/h to 0 in 5 seconds, for sure.
I dropped out of community college.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
that you just don't notice it in ignorant people?
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Since they seem to have forgotten this was posted only days before.
Sorry about skipping yesterday's class, Dr. G, but I was conserving brain cells for my old age.
From TFA:
Previous studies have shown that people with high levels of education are less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease. The new study shows that the brains of more educated people can tolerate changes for longer periods of time, meaning signs of decreased mental agility typical of Alzheimer's disease appear later. When those signs do appear, the disease progresses faster than it does in less educated patients.
So, the more educated are actually less likely to have symptoms at the same age. I'm curious how they measured the drop off in ability, and the article doesn't say.
Just another day in Paradise
How happy is a moron
No need to understand
I wish I was a moron
My God! perhaps I am!
The findings are bogus: they cite a 0.3% difference between more highly educated Alzheimer's patients and their counterparts. The counterargument is that plenty of people who wound normally go to grad school insead choose to work in industry. This small lifestyle difference for four years in a subject's late twenties should not effect tests given at age 65+. More likely is that some other factor is introduced by lifestyle differences between the two major career paths.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
That's hardly significant. Statistically, you can't really call that a correlation. If you were told that high water intake causes .3% more cancer, you'd laugh. That's the problem with medical studies in the media. A slight increase in disease due to some factor is greeted with all kinds of FUD. Hell, even placebos typically have a 5 to 10% effect on things.
Maybe the deterioration is just not noticeable.
.. say you have half full jar of water .. and well it starts deteriorating from the top part downwards .. well then you won't notice any loss of water until the jar deteriorates to the half-way point.
.. the deterioration would be noticed faster.
Like this
If the jar was full
Or, maybe the "undeducated" have more redundancy built in, which is probably why some of them hold on to what the educated consider "strange" beliefs.
I'm just speculating here. Also, as a true slashdotter I havent even read the article, so maybe it's debunked in there. lol.
Claude Shannon, the father of Information Theory, died of Alzheimer's just a few years ago. He was certainly very well educated, and apparantly did indeed suffer quite a bit with the disease.
Oh shit! I forgot to click "Post Anonymously"...
I read an article recently in New Scientist that claimed that this is actually because educated people's brains cope with the early symptoms better. When the disease reaches later stages the deterioration gets faster as the brain can no longer compensate for the damage caused by the disease.
ie. Educated people are diagnosed much later, but then appear to deteriorate faster.
/. ? ./ /.
Cd
CD
Dir
ls
ll
What the fuck is wrong with my terminal here!
anything that claims to measure "an additional 0.3% deterioration" can't be taken seriously. Please come back when your measure of 'mental ability' is so precise you can make a claim like this.
So... us 7-year undergraduates are more at risk, or less?
I also watched an interview on the BBC where another group of researchers pointed out that these results *may* be because the onset of deterioration is more easy to spot in educated people, simply because they have 'further to fall' so to speak.
The actual rate of decline, they claimed, is no different.
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
How brainpower can help you cheat old age:
Why are well-educated, active people more able to fend off the symptoms of dementia and brain damage?...
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg1882
So how exactly is this being measured? From what I can find, all the story mentions is:
"All the patients underwent around four neurological assessments, each of which comprised a dozen separate tests of brain function."
Given that Alzheimers affects everyone in different ways, I guess I'm just a little leery of a study that's claiming that it can quantitatively compare the mental facilities of one victim to another.
I forgot what we were discussing here...
I lost my sig...
This does not surprise. With less education, there is
also less to deteriorate. Its like saying, that people
doing professional sports have a faster decay of their
muscle power when aging and base this on the time to run
one mile. The study measures it in
percentages but I guess, it is very difficult to
deteriorate basic intellectual skills.
It all depends on the scale.
As people with higher education usually have jobs that demands more mental stress, it may be linked to that.
Perhaps this is an indication of how and why Alzheimer's occurs - neurological burnout. Maybe neurons have a finite amount of use in addition to a finite lifespan?
Mental ability is always non-negative and decreses exponentially.
How in the world could .3 percent be statistically significant in this study?
Of course... what do they REALLY mean by educated? I mean, I would be doing myself a disfavor if I claimed someone with a college degree was better at my job than I just because of a piece of paper - so is it actually due to brain usage, or is it because I didn't soak my brain in drugs and alcohol for 4 years?
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Continued higher education is the process of learning more and more about less and less, until one knows everything about nothing.
This state is commonly known as the Ph.D.
A bit of a shameless plug, but if you had read my take on this yesterday, you'd be well on your way to a healthier lifestyle by now via Indian food.
http://saccharomyces.blogspot.com/
Not only am I a scientist, I play one on TV
I for one think this is something we should not joke about. I mean come on, making fun of people with uh hey check it out what did you have for lunch? I'm going to go out now and look for I had a sandwitch and onions on is that a duck?
what
At least that's one thing we won't have to worry about with this President.
Please mod me 1 or troll. It's where the truth is these days, even on Slashdot. Beware the power of moderators everywh
He took quite the long time to decline to his final death. What do these results have to say for his pre-disease education and cognitive capacity?
I think there are a number of things to consider about this information:
.3% variation in ANYTHING. Sorry, but the unavoidable noise level in med research - especially in thought, cognition, and learning/retention measurements - is just too high. Its just too subjective and the "norms" too variable to measure that accurately. IMHO, of course.
1) As has been pointed out in the comments, educated folks have more to lose, and (arguably) notice it sooner than less-endowed folks.
2) The thought processes of (most) educated folks are (arguably) more "conscious & deliberate" rather than "habitual", and therefore would be more succeptable to the Alz. degradation - and more noticeable to the victim. From personal experience (Mom-now) I can state that the thought and behavioral "habits" go last. Its "present" cognition and the active thought processes that degrade fastest and worst.
3) Personally, I look askance at just about ANY medical research that quotes a
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
It shows that people who eat solid food, are prone to die.
This sort of garbage is what makes researchers look bad.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Isn't that generally considered data noise, especially when dealing with organic systems?
...but hey, at least I don't have Alzheimer's! :)
Game dev and music blog
"Is that why they been dumbing down..."
Oops.
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
The most worthwhile comment so far on the whole thread.
The previous studies have shown that people with high levels of education are less likely to develop the disease, which was interesting and a bit mystifying.
This study shows that perhaps that's not really what's going on. Perhaps something about education that makes you more resistant to the disease and more able to compensate for the slow decline it induces, but once you do start declining, it happens faster. The two studies together make a lot of sense and point to a mechanism. Either taken alone seems a bit strange.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
It's more likely that educated people have a more noticeable decline. They start forgetting a lot of technical jargon and whatnot, things the average person doesnt use everyday. They have more information to lose, in my opinion.
Isn't that well within the margin of error?
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"That's hardly significant. Statistically, you can't really call that a correlation."
t echbrief5.htmc s%20Multimedia/z_square_ratio.htm
Ok, Statty Mc Statenstein, do the math for us. I've included a handy link to test for significance, all you have to do is plug in the numbers and give us your answers.
http://www.coolth.com/siginsig.htm
http://www.infoworks.ride.uri.edu/2000/techbrief/
http://www.visualstatistics.net/Visual%20Statisti
Since we all like to have facts that support our arguments, all you have to do is present your math so we can verify that the is "hardly significant".
How pathetic are you that you follow me from topic to topic and waste all your mod points at once modding me down?
This is interesting. I would love to see a comparison between those with traditional American educations (which I assume is what this study focused on) and those who are similarly capable (perhaps who hold similar titles in similarly challenging fields), but who have followed less traditional paths in learning.
For example, I can point to five people at my current job - each a very skilled software engineer, and each very skilled in debating other topics in current events; among those five people are 1 PhD, 2 Masters, 1 college drop-out, and 1 high school drop out. The one thing we all agree on? Much of traditional American education has become primarily a matter of rote memorization - there is very little teaching of theory and problem solving involved.
Further, I saw a different study some years ago that showed a strong correlation between studying the arts late in life and delaying the onset of Alzheimers. Proficiency in the arts tends to require lots of understanding of abstract concepts, akin to studying theory in more technical fields, and requires little rote memorization.
That is to say, is it possible that the study hit on people whose minds have become less plastic as a result of education? People whose brains have been conditioned to be crystalizable by massive repetition instead of adaptable to new situations? Or, to take the nature instead of nurture angle, was the study skewed heavy on people with more crystaline brains, because such people are more proficient in an educational environment heavy on rote memorization?
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Hmmm... I can't remember what was I going to say. Where am I?
Cheesy Movie Night
I'll be juuuuuusst fine..
The more I study,
The more I learn.
The more I learn,
The more I know.
The more I know,
The more I forget.
The more I forget,
The less I know.
Ergo
The more I study,
The less I know.
So why study?
Haha, n00b! I'm working on my 15th year in college!
Er... though I still don't have my MS. (Done in May. *crossfingers*)
Does this make me "more" educated, because of the total time involved, or "less" because I've spread it all out over such a long period of time? (low [credits/year] average.)
Perhaps it has already begun.
Anyone hiring ElecEngs? I'll only be there a bit before retirement!
Where's my teeth?!
It would seem to me that the more 'educated' a person is (not how smart a person is by any means) the more 'structured' his neural pathways might be. And if there is a more organized pattern in the way the brain operates, perhaps it would make sense that a disease of the brain would have an easier chance of settling in to do damage or that the effects of the damage would be more easily measured.
Consider two fields. One is just an unmanaged bunch of grass, the other is cultivated and irrigated. Both fields might yield a lot of growth, but due to the structure imposed on the other field, any interruption in it's structure could cause a lot more damage or damage in a much more noticable sense.
Well, if you trust in anectodal evidence:
http://users.eniinternet.com/bradleym/Mind.html (Playing Go seems to "innoculate" one from Alzheimer's.)
So... I'm looking for ways to not just delay, but AVOID such a debilitating disease.
My body can fail me, and I'll accept it.
If my mind goes, someone shoot me please.
There's been quite a few studies showing that the more 'intelligent' you are, or at least the more you excercise your brain, the less likely you are to be diagnosed with Alzheimers in the first place.
One I particularly liked was of a Convent where before admission the nuns had to submit an essay on why the wanted to join. The essays were all kept. By comparing the essays of those who later died of Alzheimers with those who didn't it was show there was a stong negative correlation with increasing complexity in sentence structure and breadth of vocabularly with diagnosis of Alzheimers.
Damn, I knew I shouldn't have had that etra degree.
I would be doing myself a disfavor if I claimed someone with a college degree was better at my job than I just because of a piece of paper
:P
...
Education has nothing to do with making you better at your job. That's what vocational training is for. Education is primarily to extend your mind, populate and organize your information base, and improve your general problem-solving skills. As a byproduct it often helps you at work, or to get a job, but it's not targetted at that.
You won't have any less fun going through life with minimal education, since you can't miss something that you never had. You'll only know that you did the right thing to stay on in higher education after you've done it.
All you college grads can take my HS diploma and suck it!
Clearly using your intellect to the full there
There are some contextual issues with the wording of this story's attention-getting headline. The sample of patients in the study was 312 people over 65, who had previously been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Of those 312 patients, those who had an extra year of education developed Alzheimer's later in life but when it did appear, it progressed more rapidly. So how many patients out of the 312 had that extra year? One? Six? Fifty? The article doesn't say. That matters, especially with such a tiny sample. It also doesn't say if people with more education are any more or less likely to contract the disease, or if it makes any difference. The current working theory is that people with more active neural stimulation ( i.e., people who remain mentally active and stimulated even into old age) are less likely to suffer the disease. So even if an individual had more education, it shouldn't matter, it's how much that person uses their mind as they get older.
The Algernon-Gordon effect. See 'Flowers for Algernon'.
In this fictional book the researchers were able to produce a mathematical model of the decline. Perhaps the real world researchers will use this reference in a nod to Daniel Keyes. Isn't it funny how everything Sci-Fi writes comes true eventually?
This doesn't seem to account for current mental activity. In otherwords, if you have great learning (we'll pretend for the moment that education=learning, even though it doesn't) but you are not mentally active, you may experience great loss of mental agility. But if you continue to challenge yourself mentally, perhaps these results don't apply.
When I was a kid I worked in a grocery store, where a regular customer, himself old and living in a 'retirement community' but still quite sharp-minded, made just this observation to me. He told me as a warning that if I didn't keep exercising my mind throughout my life, it would atrophy like the minds of all the people around him. He had been a professional ghost-writer when he was younger, and he continued to read voraciously while retired. He attributed to this the difference between himself and the others in the retirement community, who were losing their marbles.
Of course this is anecdotal, but thoughtfully considered anecdotes beat irrelevent/misguided 'objectivity' anyday.
I agree. Sounds like a misleading study. Mental agility is hard to measure across populations with simple tests - even when educated people start to lose a little, they often still perform well in tests as they have more 'reserve'. I imagine that there's probably a great deal of similarity in the amount of brain cells lost, but that the educated can continue to perform well in the tests as they can compensate. In the later stages of the disease, their reserve is exhausted and they decline faster. This agrees absolutely with what I have already read in textbooks when I was studying neuroscience (only a bit - in my medical student days, a few years ago now).
Sounds like lies, damn lies, and statistics. Fudging numbers to make claims rather than new ground.
This idea was invented by Shampoo.
I'd just like to remind everyone that being highly educated does not correspond directly to being highly clever. Some people need to work hard at it, some don't. Also, I thought the previous studies showed that it was people who 'exercised' their barins more were more resistant to the disease ... but I may not be recalling the study correctly.
As my grandpappy used to say (until dementia took over), "the good thing about alzheimers is that you can hide your own easter eggs."
I recently came across a research article on Nutra Ingredients that said properties of the black currant help fight memeory loss and Alzhiemers.
e _cassis_kir.php
http://www.theartofdrink.com/blog/2006/01/creme_d
A glass of Cassis a day, keeps the doctor away?
An exploration of mixology, spirits and bartending.
ConsultingFair.com
More likely is that some other factor is introduced by lifestyle differences between the two major career paths.
I'd be curious to see how this study lines up with those that suggest that regular physical activity helps to fend off such degenerative neural problems. That might tie in with the more sedentary existence that many white-collar types find themselves living as they become "knowledge" workers sitting at a desk. You know: the types that, instead of a brisk walk, take a break from working in front of their computer by... spending 15 minutes on slashdot.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Maybe it was all of that hairspray
"The findings are bogus: [...] The counterargument is that plenty of people who wound normally go to grad school insead choose to work in industry. This small lifestyle difference for four years in a subject's late twenties should not effect tests given at age 65+."
I am not so sure that education does not have a larger effect on later outcome in life than you grant, but anyway this is not necessary to offer an explanation of the findings outside of "it is bogus". One explanation would be that the number of years of education is correlated with IQ and IQ is correlated with some physical properties of the brain such as nerve conduction velocity. In this way, these physical correlates of IQ could be causing both more education (through increased IQ) and a different reaction to Alzheimer's.
I do not know anything about Alzheimer's, so I am in no way saying that this is actually the case - I am merely pointing out that there are other reasonable explanations than "it is bogus".
Bjarke Roune
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg18825 301.300.html
This went on to explain that the same physical damage has less results in educated people, so when they do show symptoms at a recognised level the disease is already advanced.
Faux pas; I didn't parse out the meaning of the sentence properly. I retract my statement.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
according to a study published in next month's issue
The more you study, the more you know.
The more you know, the more you forget.
The more you forget, the less you know.
So why study?
Um, I either forgot or never knew who first wrote that.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I hardly see how you can characterize something you seem to agree with as "lies, and damn lies."
Exactly right. The degradation could simply be more visible in the educated, who in some ways had "more to lose."
Besides, 0.3 percent difference sounds awfully low. I highly doubt that their margin of error could have even been close to this, given that these are human subjects, after all.
Procrastination Man strikes again!
Nonsense! What do you mean ..... that it progresses ..... faster in ..... educated people?
I'm sorry to say I have.
Yeah, seriously, people, it's not just "knowledge going away" - though there is that. It's a grown man barricading a door at night, thinking his 6-year old niece might be a serious threat to him. It's these weird bipolar shifts in attitudes and perceptions. Somebody can be their best friend one day, and an unscrupulous traitor the next.
I think I could deal with my dad becoming forgetful, losing capability to work with computers and electronics, and so on - though that's sad, too, since he taught me a lot of that stuff when I was a kid - but knowing where these other issues are headed just sucks.
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
Fortunately, several potential treatments for Alzheimer's are currently being developed, and a few are in trials already. eg. Elan's AAB-001, and AAC-001. We can but hope that this terrible disease will soon be defeated.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
I can't remember...
It's not that the disease progresses quicker, it is only after diagnosis it progresses quicker. This probably means that on average the disease starts at the same time but that it manifests itself earlier in 'uneducated' people.
A theory is that educated people can 'route' around the disease better, so don't display external symptoms. Their education leads, on average, to them having more connections in their brain. However, a critical point is reached where the brain can't route around the problem, and symtoms begin to be detected.
To me this is a good thing, with a disease like this I'd prefer to go quickly rather than hang around.
This time I could be arsed.
I think not!
Oh, wait...
No, this study says that if you do get Alzheimer's Disease, and are more educated, you will have a faster rate of cognitive decline. It does not say that people who are more educated are more likely to get Alzheimer's.
I guess.
This kind of statistical propoganda is ludicrous. It just goes to show you ... um ... um ... what was I saying? What were we talking about? Where am I? Who are you?
Please don't mistake education for intelligence.
This study is really saying that in cases where people have been socially conditioned for a longer period of time are better able to fend off Alzheimer's for longer periods.
Genius is usually associated with strange social behavior or thinking and just a step away from madness. Educated people are predictable and controllable and well...social.
They are just more structured, maybe that structure just helps them hang on a bit longer before they fall. I get the feeling that all the commentators are mistaking "knowing things" with being intelligent.
*looks confused* And I never said it did. In fact, I cited two studies, one saying the exact opposite of your comment.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
I guess George need to worry about this then ...
Maybe it's because you don't notice the deterioration in dumb people.
I see dumb people... they're everywhere.
They walk around like everyone else.
They don't even know that they're dumb.
Fudwatcher
davecb5620@gmail.com
Wibble
What happens is that smarter people are able to compensate for longer the damage caused by Alzheimer's. Thus they tend to show the "show-stopping" symptoms much later than the average person. But by that time, the disease has ravaged the brain so much that the decline *seems* ("seem" is the critical word) to happen a lot faster.
There was recently an article on New Scientist precisely about this: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg18825 301.300.html
(unfortunately the whole article does not seem available for free on the web).
Seven years of college down the DRAIN! -John Belushi
I aim to misbehave.
Just because you went through school in your 20's doesn't mean you keep on using your mind. From knowing some of the kids I see going to university today, I'd say there is very little proof that it means people use their minds during school. Heck, George Bush is an ivy league graduate, and it is very likely that he suffered brain damaged from all his booze and drug years.
Other studies which I put more stock in, have illustrated that people who regularly work their minds are far less likely to contract degenerative brain diseases. That makes sense to me.
This study sounds chumpy. What are they trying to say exactly? Don't think too much? I'd be very wary if anybody told me to stop thinking.
-FL
In the uneducated, you just can't tell the difference.
Lighten up. Its only a post.
Even if this research proved to be accurate, Slashdot readers have nothing to worry about.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
One of the lowest rates of Alzheimer's appears in Indian villages,
with only 1% of people 65 and older having the condition.
The specific ingredient has been narrowed down to tumeric, the
spice often used in spicy mustard .
A recent study suggests that the reason might be a diet high in curcumin,
a compound found in turmeric which is used in curry, which has long been
used as an herbal treatment in that country.
http://www.alz.org/News/04Q4/122304.asp
Once again nature provides, I wonder what other cures simple grow in the ground
that we don't know about yet .
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
They said:
... ok, maybe there is, but I'm NOT a PhD in the field, nor am I an M.D.), we could correctly visualize it this way:
1. People with more education develop Alzheimers later; and
2. People with more education take longer to deteriorate due to Alzheimer's but progress thru the symptoms faster.
Based on the data (and there is no truth to me having a stack of Alzheimer's patient data and control data on my desk
A. If you are highly educated, you may (or may not) have a long way to fall before your symptoms become obvious to others - the tests we have measure your abilities to do various tests, remember things, all kinds of stuff that you may develop strategies to compensate for given higher education (or don't develop strategies).
B. If you start with a high level of ability, you have a longer way to fall before unable to complete tasks, but if the disease affects your neural pathways (and it does, and we do need more brains, so we can study that, got one to spare?) then going from 200 to 150 to 100 to 50 to dead is similar to going from 100 to 75 to 50 to 25 to dead. Same time, sharper fall. However, you may be more capable for a longer time. Note, I did not say IQ, but ability - not the same thing at all.
Again, to get the real answers, you should read the original paper as published in the original scientific journal.
But, in the end, seems the best thing you can do is:
a. get some exercise, even if just gardening or walking to the grocery store to buy milk;
b. increase your mental abilities, because then if you do start failing, you'll be capable much longer, which is better;
c. realize that you have less than a 5 percent risk around 60-70 and a 20 percent risk around 90+
d. you'll probably die from the massive storm caused from Global Warming kicking up the power on your Sunset cruise in the Caribbean when you retire anyway, so this is all moot.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I went to public school. I must be immune to Alzheimer's!
I should point out that most people developing Alzheimers today did, in fact, go to school a long time ago.
Many develop the disease between 55 and 95, so let's take the median, which is 75 (actually, more like 72, since fewer people are 95 than 55), so they went to school from ages 6 to 18 or 6 to 24, which means they went to college in the 1940s or thereabouts.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
In the uneducated, you just can't tell the difference.
Then how do you explain George?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
So how exactly is this being measured? From what I can find, all the story mentions is:
"All the patients underwent around four neurological assessments, each of which comprised a dozen separate tests of brain function."
Well, let's see, there's a Physical evaluation, Hachinski Ischemic Scale, UPDRS Motor Exam, Clinical Dementia Rating Scale (CDR), Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI), Behavioral Assesment - Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), Functional Assessment (FAQ), Clinicial Judgement of Symptoms Onset, Neuropsychological Battery ( Digit Span Forward/Backward, Category Fluency, Trail Making Tests, WAIS-R Digit Symbol, Logical Memory IIA, Boston Naming Test), Lawton-Brody PSMS, Mini Mental State Exam. Plus others done by different research centers for their particular study.
Is that useful? If not, check out www.nacc.org for more info.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Not to oversimplify or diminish the great work of researchers, but what would you notice more, a faded color picture, or a faded black and white picture? Both capture information, but one is capable of a greater amount of detail and enhanced imagery. It doen't necessarily say that one is better or worse than the other, but it seems to me to be a relative issue. Which is larger - 10% of a million dollars or 60% of one hundred dollars? It depends on your perspective. If it's your total wealth, then losing more than half of what you once had is worse, yet when comparing the raw dollar amounts, the one hundred thousand dollars looks bigger. I pray that they find a cure soon. It is a horrible disease to witness, and worse to have. Doc.
good expanations
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Well, it is already established that more educated people have a lower risk of Alzheimer's, and a later onset. This study, however, follows a few hundred already diagnosed patients for five years, and notes that the rate of cognitive decline is faster in the more educated patients. Probably they just didn't have enough coffee Be a little more interesting when the study itself is available instead of the press release.
Personally, I think they should all just move to Seattle and drink more coffee.
Oh, wait, then it would be crowded around here.
Ok, maybe they should just drink more coffee - prefereably from Tully's, Starbucks, or Seattle's Best Coffee. Or Peet's.
That would be good.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The first thought that came into my mind when I read this: if you have more (mental ability) and the end result of Alzheimer is the same for all people, then you will lose it (mental ability) faster...
...
That's assuming they get to the end point at the same time, which may not be true.
The end point of Alzheimers is death. Yes, it's true.
But you raise a good followup research study question there.
Remember that the data is observed over many years, partially through other people's observations, and measurements are separated by years.
But, in the end, the end result is death.
Now, if we could just get more people to donate their brains after they die, we could study what it looks like more easily. It's not like they're using it
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My guess is that more educated people are able to "fake" it better. It seems then that the disease is progressing more rapidly but that's because it is at a more advanced stage.
I'm certain someone else has said this, but...
When I was in biopsych class about 2 or 3 years ago, this type of issue was discussed. The evidence at that time was that the brains of everyone with Alzheimer's deteriorated at a similar rate but that those with more education as well as those who continued learning throughout life showed fewer symptoms.
The hypothesis we entertained was that because learning new things leads to new connections in the brain through dendritic growth, the brains inate plasticity routed around the damaged areas through the new connections. Admittedly, I haven't RTFA, but it doesn't sound like this study says anything that new.
"I swear I won't break you if you let me take you where the willows never weep" -- Switchblade Symphony
The article goes on to mention a 1992 study at Columbia University which found, based on direct measurement of blood flows in the brain, that those who had received more education also had more severe brain pathology.
Since then, there has been more evidence of a "cognitive reserve" that helps better-educated people cope for a given level of brain damage. Colette Fabrigoule, a psychologist at the French University of Bordeaux, asserts
The Columbia scientist, Yaakov Stern, who did the 1992 study, believes that cognitive reserve is also enhanced by efficiency in processing information. He found that people with higher IQs didn't have to work their brains as hard as those with lower IQs to solve a set of problems.
This article doesn't appear to mention the New York study cited in the Bloomberg article.
Education and rates of cognitive decline in incident Alzheimer's disease
N Scarmeas, S M Albert, J J Manly and Y Stern
Full text Abstract pdf
As others have pointed out, the study looked at rates of decline relative to initial performace, as opposed to examining the performance of individuals after 5 years of AD.
http://www.donarmstrong.com
Very useful. Thank you.
.3% and the article was a little less than clear on that. Until I see it explained, I'm going to take that number with a grain of salt.
And just to be clear, I'm not saying the research is wrong or anything. I'm just curious how they came up with such a number as
That actually looks well-done - I should have looked before I posted since your link was in fact quite good
Hopefully it bears out with repetition and/or higher-level mammals
0.3% can absolutely be a statistically significant deviation given a large enough sample size. This is one of the problems in studies with huge samples; lots of things appear to be significantly related.
In the end it is up to the author of this or any other study to prove causation (remember, correlation is not equal to causation) and to discuss the implications of his or her findings. This is the case regardless of sample size. The author should make an argument, based on sound logic, as to whether the general public should be concerned their findings. In this case it is a 0.3% increase in disease. The benefits that come with being highly educated surely outweigh the small increased likelihood of disease.
The responder above has it right, what is interesting is that the finding is statistically significant AND it goes in the opposite direction than current theory predicts.
So, this new finding does not support previous studies. This fact is interesting, but not likely to be remarkable to people who do not study this sort of thing. The fact that the effect is significant in the opposite direction is remarkable and of interest to a wider audience.
And remember, a small percentage of "significant" findings are false positives. This is the nature of statistics. In medical research, the the odds of getting an incorrect result on a statistical test of significance is usually less than one per 1000 (i.e. "p" is equal to or less than 0.001). In other words, if you ran the same test 1000 times on the same data, you would get a significant result in error one time or less.
Last, don't forget that 14% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
Kyle-
Dear Slashdotters,
a murti/Thought04.html
You can ignore me or laugh at me or whatever you want but I think I must share something I read few years ago.
I don't remember in which of his books I read this but J Krishnamurti said that he was convinced that 1. living your life in a pattern leads to brain cell degradation and 2. meditation can lead to brain cell regeneration.
Anyway, ya all gotta make the decision whether to pursue this line of thought or not.
Another Krishnamurti said this about throught versus Alzheimer's: http://www.thehumanclub.com/Library/Wisdom/Krishn
Good luck.
r
you could always email Nikolaos Scarmeas at ns257@columbia.edu - the author of the original article - I found his email in a 2005 poster display on Science Direct, an educational research tool that most major libraries subscribe to at the university level.
Apparently he displayed a poster on this work back in June 2005, and it took his team this long to get it published - peer review can be a slow process - there's a paper I contributed to back in August 2005 and it's only in revision 47, still not accepted in Science, but should be showing up there.
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Am just thinking off the top of my head about this, but this study kind of works with the theory of use it or lose it. Neurogenesis (the building of new brain cells) is stimulated by learning new things, being in novel surroundings, etc, so if you are activly learning, your brain is building new cells to deal with the new input. However (and this is where I am speculating), if you are highly educated, you have learning new things down pat, and it is not such a struggle, even if you are exposed to novel stimuli, to get used to them. Therefore, your brain may be happy with existing pathways, and not have the urge to build new neurons. Thus, when these start breaking down, it happens faster. Does this theory work? (I am afraid I didn't RTFA...)
When you ain't got nothin
You got nothing to lose
??
If people inevitably crash after a certain time, I see the article saying that educated people nonetheless compensate longer so that the crash is _relatively_ more dramatic at the end.
Basically, that is a good thing -- sort of.
Man, there are so many things to adjust for.
Statistics isnt everything. There has to a plausible biological hypothesis behind your results for anyone to believe them. Example, cognitive reserve is a good hypothesis - albeit unproven - to explain why people with higher education tend to show symptoms of alzheimers later. Even with PERFECTLY performed statistics, there is a 5 % chance that your results are false (The arbitarily chosen alpha value is 0.05, below which any result is called "significant")
Given the right sample of overweight red haired people and perfectly toned black head people, i can prove that heart attacks are more common in red haired people. Would you believe me?
How many things did these guys adjust for? Sex? Coffee drinking? Physical activity? I didnt see any mention of this in the article (but they might have done this in the paper). I hope they adjusted for all these factors by using a GEE model or some other form of longitudnal data analysis.
Lastly, even without reading the article, the article that the journal is published in is a VERY good indicator of how good the paper is. This was a prospective study, large number of patients, startling results. I am sure if there were no shortcomings, it would have been published in a very good journal - Neurology, Archives of Neurology, NEJM and JAMA for example. There must be some systematic shortcomings which precluded publication in these very strictly reviewed journals ( e.g. high rate of lost-to-follow-up patients with selective censoring? e.g. imagine all the patients who had lower level of education AND a very rapidly progressing alzheimers dropping off the radar)
I would harbor a healthy skepticism about these findings. Remember, a recent study showed that 50 % (or was it 70? dont remember but some arbitarily high percentage) of all published studies are inaccurate!
- Siddharth.
I've been saved!
I have a PhD in . . . . . um . . . . . ah shit!
Table-ized A.I.
I was just reading in a science and nature magazine at work - don't remember which one {sheepish grin} so I'll find it on Monday - that what seemed to be Alzheimer's progressing faster, or doing more damage, was actually the well-educated and intelligent person's brain being more resistant to the early stages of Azlheimer's.
The example they gave was of a Chess Master who could calculate eight moves ahead, but started to worry a bit when that gradually fell to five.
He went to his doctor and talked about it, and the doctor admitted the man for various tests which all turned up nothing abnormal or wrong.
Chess Dude goes home puzzled but happy with his doctor's explanation.
When the man dies, a bit early as far as everyone's concerned, the autopsy revealed that Chess Dude's brain was absolutely riddled with Alzheimer's. He should have been a gibbering, drooling, vegetable months before his death, not wondering about his chess game.
The idea put forward was this - by having an active brain, we stave off the effects (but unfortunately not the result) of various calamities such as Alzheimer's, alcohol, drugs, brain injury, etc.
The harder and faster you push that grey matter, the better, more resilient parallel processor it becomes as the neural pathways are "upgraded" by simply working more. Thinking hard is like taking your brain to the gym, so bulk up all you geeks. :)
Educated people aren't dying from Alzheimer's Gone Wild, they're simply not showing the effects as much, if at all, as your average Joe Sixpack.
His name is Robert Paulsen...
Hey, the same Blade Runner line came to me when I saw the article title.
I believe I've read that animals with faster heartbeats (ie. smaller animals) have shorter lifespans than those with slower heartbeats. I think of this as all animals having a finite number of heartbeats and so if your heart beats faster you arrive at the end more quickly. I've also wondered whether athletes shorten their lives by training regularly with elevated heart beats. Similar to mechanical and electrical devices made by man, the human body is made of parts which will fatique and fail over time. Maybe Alzheimer's follows a similar course in that the more you use your brain the quicker you burn it out. In this respect it would have less to do with education and intelligence and more to do with use. eg. a highly intelligent person who uses their brain efficiently may last longer than a less intelligent person who wastes too many cycles on routine tasks.
This meets the criteria for the 'statistics' part of 'lies, damn lies, and statistics'. They seem to have broken no new ground, just agreed with those other guys.
This idea was invented by Shampoo.
Rather late to add this, but I wonder how much of this is cause vs. effect?
That is, it's a correlation between level of education and Alzheimer's progression. I wonder if it's the education itself, or the degree of disposition toward becoming educated which is the factor responsible for the correlation. Meaning, does becoming more educated excercise the brain, or reorganize it, such that this effect occurs in Alzheimers-succeptible people, or does it come from the mental talents the people had even before they memorized facts and learned processes to accumulate all that knowledge?
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand