rickyf
#2
If it is on X (AKA Twitter), is the information trustworthy?
jnorm
#3
Full paper (Nature Medicine, 2025):
Reevaluating the role of education on cognitive decline and brain aging in longitudinal cohorts acr.PDF (305.3 KB)
As one of the authors states to the media, you should keep in mind that
This does not detract from the fact that starting from a better cognitive reserve provides an advantage, because if you start higher, you will end up higher. Clearly, education and early schooling improve cognitive function throughout life, but they do not influence the rate of decline or the structural aging of the brain. Regardless of the education level, all brains change in very similar ways in midlife and old age", Cattaneo continues.
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I thought this was uncontrovercial and commonly accepted. I didn’t even realize that people thought education actually slowed down the intrinsic aging of the brain.
But there’s interesting research on AD, where you can develop enough cognitive reserve early on, so that even though your brain upon autopsy has the usual plaque burden associated with AD, you don’t actually show symptoms of cognitive impairment until the end. So it still pays to keep being intellectually stimulated.
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Tim
#5
Education itself does not build a cognitive reserve, but higher education levels do correlate more or less strongly with higher levels of intelligence. Plus, it is more convenient to use as a measurement, compared to IQ or the SAT, which may be more accurate assessments.
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