#cognitiveaging — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #cognitiveaging, aggregated by home.social.
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DATE: August 14, 2026 at 07:19AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Women taking estrogen had fewer signs of Alzheimer’s in their brains
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260814011028.htm
Women who used estrogen-only hormone therapy later in life were less likely to develop dementia and showed fewer signs of Alzheimer’s disease in their brains, according to a large study of more than 21,000 participants. Hormone therapy use was linked to 39% lower odds of a dementia diagnosis and 35% lower odds of Alzheimer’s-related brain changes at autopsy, including amyloid plaques and tau tangles. Biomarker tests also suggested less amyloid buildup among hormone therapy users.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260814011028.htm
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #EstrogenTherapy #AlzheimersResearch #DementiaPrevention #WomenHealth #HormoneTherapy #AmyloidPlaques #TauTangles #BrainHealth #CognitiveAging #NeurodegenerativeDiseases
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DATE: August 6, 2026 at 06:00PM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Cognitive abilities predict how well people manage their emotional responses
A recent study reveals that accumulated life knowledge helps adults manage their emotions across a variety of situations, while the ability to process new information quickly is primarily helpful for reducing negative feelings. Older adults exhibited more difficulty dampening negative emotions like disgust and sadness compared to younger adults, but they maintained the ability to boost positive emotions. The research was published in the journal Emotion.
As people age, their cognitive abilities undergo distinct changes. Some mental skills decline, while others remain stable or even improve. Researchers divide these mental abilities into two broad categories known as fluid cognition and crystallized cognition.
Fluid cognition refers to the brain’s ability to access, process, and manipulate information in real time. It encompasses processing speed, working memory, and the capacity to shift attention quickly. This type of mental agility tends to peak in early adulthood and slowly declines as people get older.
Crystallized cognition represents the knowledge and skills a person acquires over a lifetime. It includes vocabulary, reading comprehension, and an understanding of social situations. Unlike fluid cognition, crystallized cognition generally remains stable or continues to grow well into older adulthood.
Psychologists have sought to understand how these shifting cognitive resources affect emotion regulation. Emotion regulation is the process by which individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express these feelings. Successfully managing emotions is tied to overall psychological health and life satisfaction.
The research team, led by psychologist Claire M. Growney of Stanford University, alongside David A. Balota and Tammy English of Washington University in St. Louis, investigated how aging and cognitive abilities relate to emotion regulation. They wanted to see if older adults rely on their acquired knowledge to regulate emotions or if declines in fluid cognition make certain emotional situations harder to manage.
Prior research often focused on how people reduce negative feelings. This study expanded that focus to include how people amplify or maintain positive feelings. The researchers aimed to identify the conditions under which age-related advantages or vulnerabilities in emotional management emerge.
To explore these questions, the research team recruited 286 adults ranging in age from 25 to 85. The participants lived in the St. Louis, Missouri, area and represented a diverse cross-section of socioeconomic backgrounds. None of the participants exhibited signs of cognitive impairment or dementia.
The participants first completed a standard battery of tests to assess their cognitive abilities. They engaged in tasks that measured their processing speed, cognitive flexibility, and memory to establish a fluid cognition score. They also completed reading and vocabulary tests to establish a crystallized cognition score.
Next, the participants took part in a laboratory emotion regulation task. They sat alone at a computer while a camera recorded their facial expressions. They watched a series of short film clips validated by previous research to elicit specific emotional responses.
During the first phase of the task, participants watched clips meant to induce disgust, sadness, amusement, and contentment. They were instructed to react naturally and not try to change how they felt. This phase established a baseline for how strongly each person normally reacted to the emotional content.
In the second phase, participants watched a new set of clips eliciting the same four emotions. This time, they received explicit instructions to regulate their feelings. For the sadness and disgust videos, they were told to use any strategy they wanted to make themselves feel less negative.
For the amusement and contentment videos, the instructions shifted. Participants were asked to manage their emotions so that they felt more positive, keeping the good feelings going. After each video, the participants rated the intensity of the specific emotion they experienced on a numerical scale.
In addition to self-reported emotional experience, the researchers used artificial intelligence software to analyze the participants’ facial expressions. The automated program scanned the video recordings and scored the presence and intensity of specific emotions on participants’ faces. This provided a secondary, behavioral measure of how successfully the participants regulated their emotions.
The results revealed distinct patterns in how cognitive abilities relate to emotional management. Participants who scored higher on the crystallized cognition tests were more successful at regulating their emotions across the board. This advantage appeared regardless of whether they were trying to reduce negative emotions or enhance positive ones.
The benefits of crystallized cognition were visible in both the participants’ self-reported feelings and their computer-analyzed facial expressions. The researchers suggest that a vast repository of life experience and vocabulary gives people a wider range of strategies to manage their feelings. People with high crystallized cognition might be better at labeling their emotions and selecting the right mental tool for a given situation.
Fluid cognition, on the other hand, was only associated with success in specific scenarios. Participants with higher fluid cognitive abilities were better at reducing their negative emotional experiences when watching the disgust and sadness clips. This type of fast, flexible thinking was not associated with the ability to boost positive emotions like amusement and contentment.
Dampening negative emotions might require more mental effort than enjoying positive ones. Decreasing sadness or disgust often requires a person to quickly shift their attention away from distressing information or rapidly reframe the meaning of a situation. These mental maneuvers rely heavily on the working memory and processing speed captured by fluid cognition tests.
The study also uncovered nuanced associations between age and emotion regulation. Older age was associated with less success in decreasing the experience of sadness and disgust. This pattern was consistent for both internal feelings and outward facial expressions.
The researchers note that negative, high-arousal emotions like disgust might pose specific physiological challenges for older adults. Alternatively, older adults might find it harder to detach from social loss themes present in sad videos due to shifting emotional priorities. As people age, they often become more prosocial and empathetic, which might make it harder to turn off feelings of sadness when witnessing others in distress.
Despite these difficulties with negative content, older adults were just as successful as younger adults at maintaining or amplifying positive emotions. Enhancing positive feelings often involves savoring a moment or elaborating on pleasant thoughts. This approach aligns well with the motivational goals of older adults, who tend to prioritize emotional well-being and positive experiences.
The researchers also tested whether possessing high cognitive abilities could offset the age-related difficulties in managing negative emotions. The statistical analysis showed no interaction between age and cognitive test performance. The benefits of crystallized cognition and the challenges associated with older age operated independently of each other.
While the study provides a detailed look at emotion regulation, the research has limitations. The study was cross-sectional, meaning it measured different people of different ages at a single point in time. This design prevents researchers from tracking how an individual’s emotion regulation skills might change as they grow older.
The laboratory setting also presents specific constraints. Participants were required to watch intensely emotional film clips, which might not reflect the emotional situations they encounter in daily life. In the real world, people often regulate their emotions by choosing which situations to enter or avoid entirely, an option not available during the computer task.
The use of artificial intelligence to code facial expressions is another factor to consider. Automated coding offers an objective measure of facial movements, but outward expressions do not always perfectly align with internal feelings. Some individuals might naturally express less emotion on their faces, especially when sitting alone in a room without an audience.
Future studies might explore a wider variety of emotions, such as fear or joy, to see if the patterns hold true. Researchers are also interested in examining how people select specific emotional strategies in their daily lives compared to what they do in a controlled laboratory environment. Understanding how life experience contributes to everyday emotional wellness remains an active area of psychological research.
The study, “Fluid and Crystallized Cognitive Abilities Differentially Predict Successful Regulation of Positive versus Negative Emotion,” was authored by Claire M. Growney, David A. Balota, and Tammy English.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #CognitiveAging #CrystallizedCognition #FluidCognition #EmotionRegulation #PositiveEmotion #NegativeEmotion #AgingAndEmotion #StanfordResearch #PsychologyStudy #CognitiveAbilities
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DATE: August 5, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Study of “super movers” suggests exceptional mobility in late life is a powerful marker of brain health
Older adults who maintain exceptionally fast walking speeds into their eighties tend to experience less cognitive decline and have a lower risk of developing cognitive impairment. New research published in the journal Neurology indicates that these individuals, dubbed “super movers,” do not necessarily have less Alzheimer’s-related brain pathology but instead possess structural advantages in the brain that might help them cope with aging. These findings provide evidence that superior physical mobility in late life acts as a strong marker of brain resilience.
Walking speed is a well-established marker of overall health in older age. As people age, their gait naturally slows down. A small subset of the population maintains walking speeds well above average into their eighties and nineties. Scientists call these older adults “super movers.”
Previous research indicates that super movers tend to have fewer chronic health conditions, healthier lifestyles, and a younger biological age than their peers. Because physical health is closely tied to brain health, scientists wanted to see if this exceptional physical mobility translates to better mental function.
“Most research focuses on why people walk slower as they age,” said Joe Verghese, a professor and chair of neurology at Stony Brook University. “We wanted to understand the opposite: why some adults over 80 maintain exceptional mobility and whether that reflects healthier brain aging.”
The rationale for the study was to explore whether super movers have a lower risk of developing cognitive impairments or dementia. The authors also wanted to examine whether these individuals have healthier brain structures or less buildup of the physical markers associated with Alzheimer’s disease. To answer these questions, the researchers combined data from three distinct, large-scale health databases.
First, the authors analyzed data from an international network of health and retirement studies. This sample included 3,989 adults aged 80 and older from the United States, England, Europe, China, and Mexico. None of these individuals had Alzheimer’s disease or dementia at the beginning of the study.
The researchers defined super movers as those whose walking speeds were at least 1.5 standard deviations above the average for their specific age and sex. A standard deviation is a statistical measure that shows how much variation exists from the average. This means these super movers were in roughly the top seven percent of walkers for their demographic.
The researchers then tracked the participants for an average of 3.4 to 5.4 years. They monitored the subjects to see who developed cognitive impairment. The findings suggest that super movers have a notably lower risk of experiencing cognitive decline.
Super movers had a 51 percent lower relative risk of developing new cognitive impairment compared to regular movers. Out of the 3,715 participants analyzed for this specific risk, the overall incidence of cognitive impairment was much lower for those with exceptional walking speed. “The effect size was large,” Verghese said. “Super movers had about a 50% lower risk of developing cognitive impairment than their peers.”
This reduced risk was consistent even after adjusting for basic demographic factors like age and sex. The researchers also accounted for the participants’ baseline cognitive performance before the follow-up period. The data provides evidence that super mobility in late life acts as a robust indicator of future cognitive health.
Next, the researchers looked at data from the LonGenity study, which tracks the health of older adults of Ashkenazi Jewish descent. This portion included 197 adults aged 80 and older who underwent annual cognitive tests for an average of 4.4 years. The cognitive tests measured functions like memory recall, mental processing speed, and visual-spatial skills.
A smaller subset of 64 participants also received magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, to measure brain structure. An MRI is a medical imaging technique that uses magnetic fields to create detailed pictures of the organs and tissues within the body. In this sample, super movers showed a slower rate of decline in both memory and non-memory tasks.
They specifically maintained better processing speed and visual-spatial skills over time. The brain imaging data indicated that super movers had larger volumes in the hippocampus. The hippocampus is a brain region deeply involved in memory formation and spatial navigation.
Specifically, super movers had more volume in the right hippocampus and in localized sub-regions associated with memory and movement. However, the differences in overall cortical thickness were not statistically significant between the two groups. Cortical thickness refers to the width of the outer layer of the brain, which typically thins as people age.
Finally, the authors analyzed autopsy data from a memory and aging project based at RUSH University. This included 692 participants aged 80 and older who had their walking speed measured during life and consented to brain autopsies after death. The researchers examined the brains for physical signs of dementia.
These signs include amyloid plaques and tau tangles. Plaques and tangles are abnormal protein clusters that build up in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease. The authors compared the post-mortem brain tissue of super movers to that of regular movers.
Before death, the super movers in this group demonstrated better overall cognitive performance and lower rates of diagnosed Alzheimer’s disease. When examining the brains post-mortem, the authors found no differences in the amount of Alzheimer’s-related plaques and tangles between super movers and regular movers. “Super movers had better cognitive outcomes despite having similar Alzheimer’s pathology at autopsy,” Verghese said.
“That points toward resilience rather than simply having less disease,” Verghese continued. This suggests that super movers do not necessarily avoid the physical brain pathology of aging. Instead, their brains might possess a form of resilience that allows them to maintain sharp mental function. They seem able to cope with the presence of these disease markers better than people with slower walking speeds.
The observational nature of this research leaves open the question of direct cause and effect. The strong relationship between walking speed and brain health does not mean that walking fast directly prevents cognitive decline. A person cannot simply force themselves to walk faster to stave off dementia.
“This is an observational study,” Verghese noted. “We cannot conclude that walking faster prevents dementia, only that exceptional mobility is associated with healthier cognitive aging.” Exceptional walking speed and sharp cognition are likely both outward signs of an underlying resilience in the brain and body.
The threshold used to define super movers is based on statistical averages rather than a strict biological cutoff. This means the specific walking speed required to be a super mover can vary depending on a population’s overall health and average physical fitness. Using relative statistical cutoffs makes it hard to create a universal clinical standard for what constitutes a super mover.
The autopsy sample also consisted mostly of highly educated, health-conscious volunteers. This demographic skew limits how well these specific autopsy findings apply to the general public. Future research will need to examine physical brain pathology in more diverse, globally representative populations.
Scientists hope to identify specific lifestyle factors, such as dietary habits and sleep quality, that support brain resilience. Understanding how environmental conditions and community infrastructure support exceptional aging could inform public health strategies. “We want to identify the biological, lifestyle, and environmental factors that make someone a super mover, with the goal of developing strategies to promote healthy brain aging for everyone,” Verghese said.
Identifying the behavioral and biological traits of super movers might eventually help health professionals preserve cognitive function in all older adults. “Faster walking in later life is a marker of healthy brain aging,” Verghese explained. “Staying active throughout life is one of the best things we know to support both physical and cognitive health.”
Looking forward, the researchers emphasize the importance of positive aging models. “Studying people who age exceptionally well can be just as informative as studying disease,” Verghese said. “They may reveal new pathways to maintaining cognitive health into very old age.”
The study, “Cognitive Aging and Brain Health: A Comparison of Super Movers vs Nonsuper Movers,” was authored by Oshadi Jayakody, Sofiya Milman, Nir Barzilai, Erica F. Weiss, Cuiling Wang, Ying Jin, Helena Blumen, and Joe Verghese.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #SuperMovers #BrainHealth #CognitiveAging #MobilityAndMind #BrainResilience #HealthyAging #WalkingSpeed #Hippocampus #DementiaPrevention #AgingResearch
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DATE: July 27, 2026 at 05:02AM
SOURCE: SCIENCE DAILY MIND-BRAIN FEEDTITLE: Eating within 8 hours may help keep the aging brain sharp
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/07/260727012125.htm
Eating within a shorter daily window may help protect certain thinking skills as people age. In a small six-month trial, older women who limited eating to about 8 to 9 hours a day performed better on planning and problem-solving tests than those who ate over 12 hours. Both groups lost similar amounts of weight, hinting that when people eat could matter in addition to how much they eat.
URL: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/07/260727012125.htm
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #IntermittentFasting #HealthyAging #BrainHealth #CognitiveAging #8HourWindow #TimeRestrictedEating #DinnerEarlier #MentalSharpness #OlderAdults #WellnessResearch
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Predictors of longitudinal cognitive ageing from age 70 to 82 including #APOEe4 status, early-life and #lifestyle factors: the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936
APOE4 status explains the majority of variance in cognitive aging (but not much in a verbal domain) when early-life and lifestyle factors are included in the same model.
(Open Access)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01900-4 -
Hey Mastodon community!
I'm an Assistant Professor at #GordonCollege
My research examines lifespan changes in the prioritization of and memory for social and emotional content, and how these changes relate to moral cognition.
I'm looking forward to meeting people interested in these topics on this platform!
#Memory #Morality
#Psychology #MoralPsychology #CognitiveScience #CognitiveAging #fMRI #Neuroscience #CognitiveNeuroscience #BrainNetworks -
Hi Kait, great idea! If you could please add me to the list, including the keywords #cognitiveaging #risktaking #decisionmaking and #openscience