Key result
Educational Exposome Framework maps how education shapes cognitive development and neurodegeneration to clarify AD/ADRD risk.
Why the study?
Educational environments remain underexplored within the exposome despite their role in cognitive aging and AD/ADRD, and traditional measures like years of schooling underestimate exposure heterogeneity and mechanisms.
This framework provides a multidimensional approach to studying how educational exposures across the life course influence cognitive aging and dementia risk.
May inform life-course dementia prevention research; leaves open causal effects and clinical translation.
INTRODUCTION: The exposome encompasses all environmental exposures across the life course, yet educational environments, a critical socioenvironmental exposure, remain underexplored despite their role in cognitive aging and Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (AD/ADRD). Traditional measures, such as years of schooling, underestimate exposure heterogeneity and mechanisms influencing cognitive reserve. METHODS: The Educational Exposome Framework integrates psychosocial, resource-based, environmental, and structural domains of education: academic self-efficacy, home and community learning resources, and institutional learning contexts drawing on life-course, exposomic, and cognitive health research. RESULTS: The framework conceptualizes education as a multidimensional, interacting system shaping cognitive development, stress biology, and neurodegeneration. Legacy and emerging datasets, including High School & Beyond, Health and Retirement Study, and Add Health, enable life-course reconstruction of educational exposures linked to midlife and later-life cognition. DISCUSSION: By capturing mechanistic pathways and leveraging linked data, the framework supports equity-focused dementia prevention and clarifies education's role in AD/ADRD risk.
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Kimson Johnson (2026) conducted a review in Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (AD/ADRD). Educational environments was evaluated on Cognitive development, stress biology, and neurodegeneration. The Educational Exposome Framework conceptualizes education as a multidimensional system shaping cognitive development and neurodegeneration to clarify its role in AD/ADRD risk.
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