Publications by authors named "LaMar M"

Financial and health literacy is essential for older adults to navigate complex decision processes in late life. However, the neurobiological basis of age-related decline in financial and health literacy is poorly understood. This study aimed to characterize progression of neurodegenerative and vascular conditions over time, and to assess how these changes coincide with declining financial and health literacy in old age.

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Older adults with greater scam susceptibility are at greater risk for mild cognitive impairment and incident Alzheimer's dementia, regardless of baseline cognition. This, combined with documented associations between scam susceptibility and beta amyloid at death suggests that scam susceptibility may be an earlier indicator of pathological aging than cognition. Little, however, is known about whether in vivo neuroimaging markers of early-stage risk for Alzheimer's dementia are also related to scam susceptibility; such knowledge will inform upon the associations of neurodegenerative processes with scam susceptibility and may help identify vulnerable individuals.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study examines how late-life mobility disability can fluctuate between worsening and improving states, particularly looking at the role of physical, social, and cognitive activities.
  • Researchers analyzed data from 2,758 individuals, averaging age 78.1, over an average of 7.6 years, discovering that a significant percentage experienced changes in mobility disability.
  • Results indicated that higher levels of physical and social activities were linked to lower chances of worsening mobility and higher chances of improvement, while cognitive activity showed an association primarily with worsening mobility.
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Introduction: A rapid and reliable neuropsychological protocol is essential for the efficient assessment of neurocognitive constructs related to emergent neurodegenerative diseases. We developed an AI-assisted, digitally administered/scored neuropsychological protocol that can be remotely administered in ~10 min. This protocol assesses the requisite neurocognitive constructs associated with emergent neurodegenerative illnesses.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study focused on the Hispanic/Latino population, one of the largest groups in the U.S. at high risk for dementia, examining how cognitive performance relates to brain health over time.
  • - Researchers analyzed data from nearly 2,000 participants across two visits, finding that lower scores in episodic and working memory were linked to more severe brain changes, like increased white matter hyperintensity and decreased hippocampal volume.
  • - The results suggest that understanding cognitive risk profiles in this group could help with early detection and intervention for neurodegenerative conditions, potentially influencing their progression.
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Objectives: The study aims to identify factors associated with health care and financial decision-making among older Black adults without dementia.

Methods: Participants ( = 326) underwent assessments of decision-making and completed measurements of factors from four categories: cognitive, contextual, psychosocial, and personality. We performed separate linear regression models to examine the association between each factor and decision-making and created a fully adjusted model.

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Introduction: Older Black adults are at risk of cerebral small vessel disease (CSVD), which contributes to dementia risk. Two subtypes of CSVD, arteriolosclerosis and ischemic lacunar infarcts, have been independently linked to lower cognition and higher dementia risk, but their combined effects on cognition in older Black adults are unclear.

Methods: Mixed models were used to examine the associations of in vivo measures of arteriolosclerosis (ARTS) and ischemic lacunar infarcts to cognitive level and change in 370 older Black adults without dementia.

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Introduction: conducted a study within the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos- Investigation of Neurocognitive Aging (HCHS/SOL-INCA) cohort to examine the association between gut microbiome and cognitive function.

Methods: We analyzed the fecal metagenomes of 2,471 HCHS/SOL-INCA participants to, cross-sectionally, identify microbial taxonomic and functional features associated with global cognitive function. Omnibus (PERMANOVA) and feature-wise analyses (MaAsLin2) were conducted to identify microbiome-cognition associations, and specific microbial species and pathways (Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG modules) associated with cognition.

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Background: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors are highly prevalent among Hispanic/Latino adults, while the prevalence of MRI infarcts is not well-documented. We, therefore, sought to examine the relationships between CVD risk factors and infarcts with brain structure among Hispanic/Latino individuals.

Methods: Participants included 1,886 Hispanic/Latino adults (50-85 years) who underwent magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as part of the Study of Latinos-Investigation of Neurocognitive Aging-MRI (SOL-INCA-MRI) study.

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Background: US-based Latinos have lower education and income combined with higher health risks than non-Latino whites, but often 'paradoxically' evidence better health-related outcomes. Less work has investigated this paradox for cognitive-related outcomes despite nativity diversity.

Objective: We evaluated cognitive aging within older Latinos of diverse nativity currently living in the US and participating in Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center studies.

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Background: Higher allostatic load (AL), a multi-system measure of physiological dysregulation considered a proxy for chronic stress exposure, is associated with poorer global cognition (GC) in older non-Hispanic white adults. However, evidence of these associations in middle-aged and older US-based Hispanic/Latino adults is limited.

Objective: To examine associations of AL with level of cognition, performance in cognition 7 years later, and change in cognition over 7 years among middle-aged and older US-based Hispanic/Latino adults.

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Background And Objectives: Structural brain MRI and blood-based phosphorylated tau (p-tau) measures are among the least invasive and least expensive Alzheimer's disease (AD) biomarkers to date. The extent to which these biomarkers may outperform one another in predicting future Alzheimer dementia diagnosis is poorly understood, however. This study investigated 2 specific AD biomarkers, i.

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Objectives: Many sleep-wake behaviors have been associated with cognition. We examined a panel of sleep-wake/activity characteristics to determine which are most robustly related to having low cognitive performance in midlife. Secondarily, we evaluate the predictive utility of sleep-wake measures to screen for low cognitive performance.

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Introduction: We investigated cognitive profiles among diverse, middle-aged and older Hispanic/Latino adults in the Study of Latinos-Investigation of Neurocognitive Aging (SOL-INCA) cohort using a cross-sectional observational study design.

Methods: Based on weighted descriptive statistics, the average baseline age of the target population was 56.4 years, slightly more than half were women (54.

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Background: Digital neuropsychological tests reliably capture real-time, process-based behavior that traditional paper/pencil tests cannot detect, enabling earlier detection of neurodegenerative illness. We assessed relations between informant-based subtle and mild functional decline and process-based features extracted from the digital Trail Making Test-Part B (dTMT-B).

Methods: A total of 321 community-dwelling participants (56.

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Introduction: Executive functioning and processing speed are crucial elements of neuropsychological assessment. To meet the needs of the Hispanic/Latino population, we aimed to provide normative data for the Digit Symbol Substitution (DSS) test.

Methods: The target population for the Study of Latinos-Investigation of Neurocognitive Aging included six heritage backgrounds ( = 6177).

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The prevalence of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related dementias (ADRD) is increasing. African Americans are twice as likely to develop dementia than other ethnic populations. Traditional cognitive screening solutions lack the sensitivity to independently identify individuals at risk for cognitive decline.

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Background: Lower hippocampal volume is associated with late-life cognitive decline and is an important, but nonspecific marker for clinical Alzheimer's dementia. Cerebrovascular disease may also be associated with hippocampal volume. Here we study the role of intracranial large vessel disease (atherosclerosis) in association with hippocampal volume and the potential role of age, average late-life blood pressure across all visits, and other factors (sex, apolipoprotein ε4 [ ε4], and diabetes).

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Unlabelled: We propose a novel method to assess delayed primacy in the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease (CERAD) memory test. We then examine whether this measure predicts Alzheimer's disease (AD) neuropathology in individuals who were clinically unimpaired at baseline. A total of 1096 individuals were selected from the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center database registry.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study investigates how age and sex affect myelin content in the brain's limbic pathways in older adults without dementia, particularly focusing on white matter integrity related to Alzheimer's disease.
  • - Using MRI and neuropsychological testing, researchers found that myelin water fraction (MWF) decreased with age in women but not in men, particularly in specific brain regions like the fornix and cingulate cingulum.
  • - The findings highlight the importance of considering sex differences in age-related myelin decline, which could aid in identifying Alzheimer's disease risk, especially among women.
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Introduction: Reproductive health history may contribute to cognitive aging and risk for Alzheimer's disease, but this is understudied among Hispanic/Latina women.

Methods: Participants included 2126 Hispanic/Latina postmenopausal women (44 to 75 years) from the Study of Latinos-Investigation of Neurocognitive Aging. Survey linear regressions separately modeled the associations between reproductive health measures (age at menarche, history of oral contraceptive use, number of pregnancies, number of live births, age at menopause, female hormone use at Visit 1, and reproductive span) with cognitive outcomes at Visit 2 (performance, 7-year change, and mild cognitive impairment [MCI] prevalence).

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Objective: Neighborhood perceptions are associated with physical and mental health outcomes; however, the biological associates of this relationship remain to be fully understood. Here, we evaluate the relationship between neighborhood perceptions and amygdala activity and connectivity with salience network (i.e.

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Objectives: Risk aversion has a substantial impact on decision making and is associated with key demographic characteristics. However, few studies have investigated whether risk aversion varies by race.

Methods: We investigated racial differences in financial risk aversion in 684 older Black and White adults without dementia in the Minority Aging Research Study and Rush Memory and Aging Project matched for age, education, sex, and cognition using Mahalanobis distance.

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At autopsy, African American decedents often have mixed Alzheimer's and cerebrovascular brain pathologies including arteriolosclerosis. We applied a novel in-vivo classifier of ARTerioloSclerosis (ARTS) in 167 older African Americans (∼75y of age) with > 2 biennial 3 T MRI scans and > 3 years of associated cognitive follow-up to determine if ARTS scores (higher score=higher likelihood of arteriolosclerosis) changed over time and if this change associated with changes in cognition in the same individuals. Mixed effects regression models tested whether ARTS scores increased over time, while simultaneous mixed effects regression models estimated the simultaneous rates of change in both ARTS and cognition and the correlation of these changes.

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