Use it or Lose it

There is no general agreement about which aspects of decline in mental capabilities are due to normal aging and which are due to early dementing illness such as Alzheimer's Disease. Mental abilities are related to many factors which make the problems of measurement very difficult.

The most basic question is whether mental decline occurs regularly among persons age 65 and over. There is general agreement that decline does occur but there is limited knowledge as which factors contribute to individual decline.

Various areas of are being investigated. They include;

Education

Socioeconomic status

Gender

Race

The role of smoking

Volume of the hippocampus

The presence of apolipoproteins

Of these factors, only education has been shown to predict the rate of cognitive decline in population studies. That is, people with few years of formal education show a relatively greater rate of cognitive decline than do more educated people.