title: Influences of preclinical dementia and impending death on the magnitude of age-related cognitive deficits.
abstract: The authors examined the influence of preclinical dementia and impending death on the cross-sectional relationship between age and performance in tasks assessing episodic memory, visuospatial skill, and verbal fluency. Increasing age was associated with a general decrease in cognitive performance. In addition, those who were to be diagnosed with dementia or had died by a 3-year follow-up, were older, and performed at a lower level than the remaining sample across all cognitive tasks at baseline. Nevertheless, removal of the preclinical dementia and impending death groups from the original sample affected the cross-sectional age-cognition relations relatively little. This pattern of findings suggests that the biological aging process exerts negative influences on cognitive functioning beyond those resulting from disease and mortality.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Uppsala University, Sweden. lars.backman@neurotec.ki.se
authors.forename: Lars
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Bäckman
authors.forename: Erika Jonsson
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: Laukka
authors.forename: Ake
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Wahlin
authors.forename: Brent J
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Small
authors.forename: Laura
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Fratiglioni
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001293:Attitude to Death; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology*; D003704:Dementia / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D010468:Perceptual Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology; D011159:Population Surveillance; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D013028:Space Perception; D013064:Speech Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology; D014796:Visual Perception