Stimulating Lifestyle is associated with Maintenance of White Matter Integrity with Age

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Brain maintenance refers to the fact that some older adults experience few age-related changes in the brain, which helps maintain their cognition. Objectives. The goals of this study are to assess maintenance of white matter integrity, test whether lifestyle factors affect the maintenance of white matter integrity, and measure whether maintenance of white matter integrity explains inter-individual differences in working memory (WM). Methods. Forty-one cognitively healthy older adults received a structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) examination to measure white matter lesions. They completed an n-back WM task with different loads (1- & 2-back), along with a questionnaire on their lifestyle. Results . There was a positive association between age and volume of white matter lesions. This association was no longer found in those with higher lifestyle scores. In addition, smaller volumes of white matter lesions were associated with better performance than expected for age in the 1-back WM task. Discussion. Better WM in older adults is associated with maintenance of white matter integrity, which in turn is linked to a more stimulating lifestyle throughout life.