Nearly 7 million Americans currently live with Alzheimer’s disease, with one in three seniors dying from Alzheimer’s or another dementia, according to the Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research Foundation.
November is Alzheimer’s Awareness Month, a time to recognize the profound impact of this disorder on individuals, families and communities nationwide. While no cure remains, research on resilience and brain function at the neural level is uncovering critical insights into risk factors and disease progression.
Florida State University faculty member Angelina Sutin is among the top researchers leading efforts to better understand and ultimately transform the future of Alzheimer’s treatment.
She is available to speak with media about her work and what it shows about how to mitigate dementia risk. Media may reach out to Professor Sutin via email at angelina.sutin@med.fsu.edu.
Sutin’s research focuses on the psychological and social factors that shape risk for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, as well as the mechanisms that influence a person’s risk or resilience across every stage of disease. She aims to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the factors that influence dementias to guide the development of effective interventions that support healthier cognitive aging.
Your research explores how personality and psychological traits affect long-term health outcomes. How do these factors influence a person’s risk or resilience against Alzheimer’s disease?
We find that personality traits, particularly neuroticism and conscientiousness, are associated with the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
Neuroticism is the tendency to feel moody, anxious, and be sensitive to stress. It is associated with increased risk of dementia. Individuals higher in neuroticism tend to be more sedentary, are more likely to smoke, and are very responsive to stress in daily life. They are also at much greater risk for depression and other chronic diseases.
On the other hand, conscientiousness, the tendency toward organization, self-discipline, and responsibility, is protective. Individuals higher in conscientiousness tend to exercise more, are less likely to smoke or use other substances, have better sleep habits, and are less likely to develop chronic diseases such as obesity or diabetes that increase risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
How can understanding the daily dynamics of personality and cognition help develop strategies for Alzheimer’s prevention or early intervention?
Most of the research on psychological factors and cognition has focused on how personality traits predict long-term outcomes, like Alzheimer’s disease. This research has been important for identifying which psychological factors contribute to the development of the disease over time. From other research, we know a lot about how personality traits are expressed in daily life.
We are now trying to better understand how these typical thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of personality traits are related to variation in cognitive function. Looking at these daily dynamics will help to identify better ways to intervene in the times when people are experiencing cognitive problems in their day-to-day lives. Intervening for better everyday functioning may help to preserve cognition as we age.
Why is it important to examine cultural and social differences in cognitive aging?
One reason that we study cognitive aging is to find ways to intervene so that people can maintain healthy cognition for as long as possible. Cognitive aging and Alzheimer’s disease happen across all cultural and social groups. There may be differences, however, in risk and protective factors.
The most effective interventions should target the strongest risk/protective factors, which may be different depending on cultural or social group. It is also important to know when factors are similar across groups. Conscientiousness, for example, is associated with lower risk of Alzheimer’s disease across many different groups. Interventions to increase conscientiousness may need to be culturally tailored, but the underlying mechanisms may be similar.
What does your research suggest about the role of stress, emotional well-being, or social connection to long-term brain memory?
We have done a lot of research on the role of emotional well-being and social connection and cognition. We find, for example, that individuals who have more purpose in life — the feeling that one has a life that is goal-oriented and has direction — are less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease. Even before Alzheimer’s disease, purpose is associated with having better memory, better attention and faster processing speed — all cognitive functions that are necessary for moving through daily life.
We also find that social connection is critical for cognitive health and how harmful social disconnection can be. In a recent meta-analysis of more than 600,000 people, we found that people who feel lonely had a 30% increased risk of all-cause dementia. Loneliness was also related to risk of specific dementias, including risk of Alzheimer’s disease and vascular dementia. We recently found loneliness to be associated with worse memory, processing speed, and reasoning and that similar associations were found in countries from very different parts of the world: Africa, Asia, Europe, North, Central, and South America. These findings indicate how harmful loneliness can be no matter where one lives.