Are you antisocial? Do you prefer to stay home and avoid human interactions? Well, new research says there may be a link between cognitive health and social factors in older adults.
Research by an interdisciplinary team from McGill University and Université Laval provides new insights into this.
Although previous research had found positive correlations between specific measures of social connections and a variety of health outcomes, this study appears to have been the first to create profiles that included multiple social factors and examine how they correlated with cognitive health in older adults.
The team divided people into three categories of social environments (weaker, average and richer) by constructing 24 social variables – reflecting elements such as network size, social support, social cohesion and social isolation – using data from approximately 30,000 participants aged 45-85 in the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA).
For cognition, the researchers examined three domains: executive function, episodic memory, and prospective memory, using data from a battery of tests previously administered to CLSA participants.
Associate professor at the McGill School of Human Nutrition and co-first author of the paper, Daiva Nielsen, stated: “We identified significant associations between the social profiles and all three cognitive domains, with the intermediate and richer profiles generally showing better cognitive outcomes than the weaker profile.”
However, the researcher noted that the effect size of the associations (a statistical measure to calculate the strength of the relationship between variables) was relatively small.
Nielsen noted that the effect sizes were slightly stronger for participants aged 65 or older, meaning the association between social environment and cognition could be more important in later stages of life.
“A lack of social connection has been shown to be similar to more widely recognized disease risk factors such as smoking, physical inactivity and obesity. It is important to translate this knowledge to the public to empower individuals to build meaningful connections within their communities,” she added.
“This work is an excellent example of the benefits of multidisciplinary research teams that can tackle complex research questions and bring diverse knowledge and expertise,” Daiva Nielsen concluded.
