In early-stage Alzheimer's disease (AD) amyloid-β (Aβ) deposition can induce neuronal hyperactivity, thereby potentially triggering activity-dependent neuronal secretion of phosphorylated tau (p-tau), ensuing tau aggregation and spread. Therefore, cortical excitability is a candidate biomarker for early AD detection. Moreover, lowering neuronal excitability could potentially complement strategies to reduce Aβ and tau buildup.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Individuals with subjective cognitive decline (SCD) express concern about self-perceived cognitive decline despite no objective impairment and are at higher risk of developing Alzheimer's disease. Despite documented links between SCD and repetitive negative thinking (RNT), the specific impact of RNT on brain integrity and cognition in exacerbating the SCD condition remains unclear. We aimed to investigate the influence of RNT on global cognition and brain integrity, and their interrelationships among healthy middle-aged and older adults experiencing SCD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Understanding the impact of different lifestyle trajectories on health preservation and disease risk is crucial for effective interventions.
Methods: This study analyzed lifestyle engagement over five years in 3,013 healthy adults aged 40-70 from the Barcelona Brain Health Initiative using K-means clustering. Nine modifiable risk factors were considered, including cognitive, physical, and social activity, vital plan, diet, obesity, smoking, alcohol consumption, and sleep.
Introduction: Digital solutions for cognitive assessment are currently not only widely used in experimental contexts but can also be useful in clinical practice for efficient screening and longitudinal follow-up. The "Guttmann Cognitest", which includes seven computerized tasks designed to assess main cognitive functions, revealed in a previous validation study to be a potential useful tool to assess cognitive functioning in healthy middle-aged adults.
Method: Here, we present results from a validation in two different populations: one consisting of older adults, and the other comprising young and middle-aged individuals, some of them affected by acquired brain injury.
Background: As the world population continues to age, the prevalence of neurological diseases, such as dementia, poses a significant challenge to society. Detecting cognitive impairment at an early stage is vital in preserving and enhancing cognitive function. Digital tools, particularly mHealth, offer a practical solution for large-scale population screening and prompt follow-up assessments of cognitive function, thus overcoming economic and time limitations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: In the field of disability and rehabilitation, has become an important therapeutic objective due to its potential impact on rehabilitation, prognosis, and patient's mid and long-term well-being. However, only a few studies have explored this issue in relation with the subjective perspective of individuals with disabilities about their decision-making capacity and satisfaction with the activities in which they participate.
Objective: Our aim is to analyze the relationship between in society of people with disabilities and both emotional well-being and quality of life, including variables about subjective perspective of (satisfaction) and the ability to decide and pursue their own preferences.
Objectives: Cognitive dispersion, representing intraindividual fluctuations in cognitive performance, is associated with cognitive decline in advanced age. We sought to elucidate sociodemographic, neuropsychological, and brain connectivity correlates of cognitive dispersion in middle age, and further consider potential influences of the severity of subjective cognitive complaints (SCC).
Methods: Five hundred and twenty healthy volunteers from the Barcelona Brain Health Initiative (aged 40-66 years; 49.
Pain processing involves emotional and cognitive factors that can modify pain perception. Increasing evidence suggests that pain catastrophizing (PC) is implicated, through pain-related self-thoughts, in the maladaptive plastic changes related to the maintenance of chronic pain (CP). Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have shown an association between CP and two main networks: default mode (DMN) and dorsoattentional (DAN).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Disease-modifying agents to counteract cognitive impairment in older age remain elusive. Hence, identifying modifiable factors promoting resilience, as the capacity of the brain to maintain cognition and function with aging and disease, is paramount. In Alzheimer's disease (AD), education and occupation are typical cognitive reserve proxies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Poor dual-task gait performance is associated with a risk of falls and cognitive decline in adults aged 65 years or older. When and why dual-task gait performance begins to deteriorate is unknown. This study aimed to characterise the relationships between age, dual-task gait, and cognitive function in middle age (ie, aged 40-64 years).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThanks to technological advances, the administration of cognitive assessments digital solutions continues to increase, both in research and clinical practice. "Guttmann Cognitest" is a digital solution for cognitive assessment which includes seven computerized tasks designed to assess main cognitive functions requiring approximately 20 min to be completed. The purpose of the present study was to validate it against standard and more extensive in-person neuropsychological assessments in the context of the Barcelona Brain Health Initiative (BBHI) cohort study.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Excitability of the primary motor cortex measured with TMS has been associated with cognitive dysfunctions in patient populations. However, only a few studies have explored this relationship in healthy adults, and even fewer have considered the role of biological sex.
Methods: Ninety-seven healthy middle-aged adults (53 male) completed a TMS protocol and a neuropsychological assessment.
Heliyon
October 2022
[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging
February 2023
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic provides a unique opportunity to investigate the psychological impact of a global major adverse situation. Our aim was to examine, in a longitudinal prospective study, the demographic, psychological, and neurobiological factors associated with interindividual differences in resilience to the mental health impact of the pandemic.
Methods: We included 2023 healthy participants (age: 54.
Psychosocial hardships associated with the COVID-19 pandemic led many individuals to suffer adverse mental health consequences, however, others show no negative effects. We hypothesized that the electroencephalographic (EEG) response to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) could serve as a toy-model of an individual's capacity to resist psychological stress, in this case linked to the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyzed data from 74 participants who underwent mental health monitoring and concurrent electroencephalography with transcranial magnetic stimulation of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (L-DLPFC) and left inferior parietal lobule (L-IPL).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBrain health is essential to successful aging, and exercise is essential to brain health. Evidence supports the benefits of regular physical and cognitive exercise in preventing or delaying progressin of mild cognitive impairment and dementia. Despite known benefits, motivation to initiate and adhere to an exercise program can be challenging to older adults.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn recent years, supported by new scientific evidence, the conceptualization of cognitive reserve (CR) has been progressively enriched and now encompasses not only cognitive stimulating activities or educational level, but also lifestyle activities, such as leisure physical activity and socialization. In this context, there is increasing interest in understanding the role of psychological factors in brain health and cognitive functioning. In a previous study, we have found that these factors mediated the relationship between CR and self-reported cognitive functioning.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: The prefrontal cortex (PFC) plays a crucial role in cognition, particularly in executive functions. Cortical reactivity measured with Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation combined with Electroencephalography (TMS-EEG) is altered in pathological conditions, and it may also be a marker of cognitive status in middle-aged adults. In this study, we investigated the associations between cognitive measures and TMS evoked EEG reactivity and explored whether the effects of this relationship were related to neurofilament light chain levels (NfL), a marker of neuroaxonal damage.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRey Auditory Verbal Learning Test (RAVLT) is an episodic memory helpful measure to detect changes associated with abnormal aging. There is a lack of RAVLT validation and normalization studies in Spain. The aim was to determine its psychometric properties and explore long-term forgetting (LTF) performance through 1-week delayed recall under three different modes of administration.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAge-related cognitive impairment (ARCI) has a profound impact on individuals, families, health care systems, and societies at large. Evidence suggests that ARCI is the consequence of underlying brain pathology. Therefore, efforts to minimize the impact of ARCI and thus closing the gap between health span and life span, which has widened in recent years, requires early detection and timely deployment of targeted, personalized interventions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChronic pain is associated with worse mental health and cognitive impairment, which can be a cause or a consequence of brain structure and function alterations, e.g., maladaptive plasticity, antinociceptive system dysregulation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBrain Health is defined as the development and preservation of optimal brain integrity and neural network functioning for a given age. Recent studies have related healthy habits with better maintenance of brain health across the lifespan. As a part of the Barcelona Brain Health Initiative (BBHI), a mHealth platform has been developed with the purpose of helping people to improve and monitor their healthy habits, facilitating the delivery of health coaching strategies.
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