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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.'"
...educated people have more to forget.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
From Bloomberg UK: 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 results of this one study don't mean much. If all previous research shows the opposite, then either a) this study is flawed and the conclusions inaccurate or b) this study uses new methodology, breaks new ground, and has discovered a new series of conditions for Alzheimer's propogation. The results won't be conclusive until more studies of this same type are produced verifying these results.
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The good point would then be that in every stage in your ongoing deterioration you would anyway be better of than your counterpart with less I.Q. The curvature of the line along which your mental abilities get worse would be steeper, but the lines would not cross. So I think even Alzheimer is not the reason to stop your hacking :)
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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.
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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.
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"Previous studies have shown that people with high levels of education are less likely to develop Alzheimer's disease."
In other words, there is a negative correlation between education level and developing Alzheimer's.
"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."
The new study suggests that, among persons who already have Alzheimer's, persons with higher education have a much longer "incubation period" (meaning the time from initial infection to onset of symptoms -- placed in quotes because no parasite causes Alzheimer's and it's just conceptual here).
That is, there is a positive correleation between education level and duration of pre-symptomatic Alzheimer's.
"When those signs do appear, the disease progresses faster than it does in less educated patients."
All this says is that once symptoms appear -- the conceptual "incubation period" has ended -- persons with higher education levels progress more quickly. That is, there is a positive correlation between education level and rate of progression of symptom severity.
So if you're highly educated, you appear to be less likely to get it. And if you do get it, it takes a long time to develop into something that affects you. But if you do get it, once it does affect you, you're going downhill pretty fast.
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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.
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Same thought that I had, although I worded it as follows:
If you have more to lose, and you are set to the same level as someone with less to lose, you have lost more.
The statistics are probably fine, but the analysis seems flawed.
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.
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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.
Much of traditional American education has become primarily a matter of rote memorization
Has become? When did you go to school, 1875?
I've been out of grade school for nearly 20 years now, and back then it was mostly rote memorization. My parents went to school nearly 50 years ago and it was even MORESO rote learning.
How many kids today drill on multiplication tables? Learn physics primarily by memorizing 3,000 different formulae? Write book reports based soley on the ability to remember the events in the story? Those were the core of education for decades if not longer. Education in North America, for the past century, has revolved around rote learning.
One of my university professors would tell stories of "final exams" back in the 40s in the more pretigious schools in England. You went to school for 4 years, and during exams, where you were required to remember and regurgitate as much as possible about the preceeding 4 years - in a single day. Talking with folks from places like India, China, and other non-western countries, their education is heavier into rote learning than ours.
Where did you go to school that your education WASN'T primarily a matter of rote memorization?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
If you look further into the study, you will notice that educated people tend to to manifest symptoms of Alzheimers later. So, if it progresses at a faster rate, is that really any worse? Additional consideration are studies that indicate people who keep their minds active slow down the progression of Alzheimers. A good article that discusses nuns who packed more ideas into the sentences of their early autobiographies were less likely to get Alzheimer's disease six decades later is at:
l zheimers.htm [Neroanatomy)
http://www.neuroanatomy.wisc.edu/selflearn/Nuns&a