title: Don't Lose Your Brain at Work - The Role of Recurrent Novelty at Work in Cognitive and Brain Aging.
abstract: Cognitive and brain aging is strongly influenced by everyday settings such as work demands. Long-term exposure to low job complexity, for instance, has detrimental effects on cognitive functioning and regional gray matter (GM) volume. Brain and cognition, however, are also characterized by plasticity. We postulate that the experience of novelty (at work) is one important trigger of plasticity. We investigated the cumulative effect of recurrent exposure to work-task changes (WTC) at low levels of job complexity on GM volume and cognitive functioning of middle-aged production workers across a time window of 17 years. In a case-control study, we found that amount of WTC was associated with better processing speed and working memory as well as with more GM volume in brain regions that have been associated with learning and that show pronounced age-related decline. Recurrent novelty at work may serve as an 'in vivo' intervention that helps counteracting debilitating long-term effects of low job complexity.
authors.affiliation: Human Resources Management, Daimler AGBremen, Germany; Psychology and Methods, Jacobs University BremenBremen, Germany.
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Oltmanns
authors.affiliation: Psychology and Methods, Jacobs University Bremen Bremen, Germany.
authors.forename: Ben
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Godde
authors.affiliation: Psychology and Methods, Jacobs University BremenBremen, Germany; Project Group Hearing, Speech and Audio Technology, Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media TechnologyOldenburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Axel H
authors.initials: AH
authors.lastname: Winneke
authors.affiliation: Psychology and Methods, Jacobs University BremenBremen, Germany; Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and HealthDortmund, Germany.
authors.forename: Götz
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Richter
authors.affiliation: Psychology and Methods, Jacobs University Bremen Bremen, Germany.
authors.forename: Claudia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Niemann
authors.affiliation: Psychology and Methods, Jacobs University BremenBremen, Germany; Institute of Applied Movement Science, Chemnitz University of TechnologyChemnitz, Germany.
authors.forename: Claudia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Voelcker-Rehage
authors.affiliation: Psychology and Methods, Jacobs University BremenBremen, Germany; German Institute for Adult Education, Leibniz Centre for Lifelong LearningBonn, Germany.
authors.forename: Klaus
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Schömann
authors.affiliation: Psychology and Methods, Jacobs University BremenBremen, Germany; Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center, Columbia University, New YorkNY, USA.
authors.forename: Ursula M
authors.initials: UM
authors.lastname: Staudinger
keywords: cognitive aging; gray matter volume; healthy aging at work; job complexity; lifespan development; plasticity; use it or lose it; work-task changes