Tackling Dementia From Every Angle

Getting Schooled on the Ties Between Education and Brain Health

Much of Chandra Muller's research at UT focuses on the connection between feeding your brain and keeping your brain healthy. Muller, a sociology professor who holds the Alma Cowden Madden Centennial and Ashbel Smith professorships, is a principal investigator for the Education Studies for Health Aging Research (EdSHARe) project, which is backed by nearly $78.7 million in federal funding from the National Institute on Aging.

The interdisciplinary project involves several UT researchers and comprises two long-term studies of education's role in cognitive functioning. Already, one of the EdSHARe studies has generated data showing that academic and socioeconomic factors in high school foreshadow cognitive performance in midlife.

What you learn - or don't learn - in school may create ripple effects that affect your brain health decades down the road, Muller says. Yet not everyone has access to rigorous top-notch schooling. As a result, someone who was fortunate enough to obtain a high-quality education may be in better shape in terms of brain health than someone who obtained a lower-quality education.

"Schools give students opportunities to develop skills, to learn how to learn, to solve problems and to think abstractly," Muller said. "Their academic performance - notably their test scores, their grades and the courses they take - predict their cognitive functioning and physical health decades after they finish school, even if they don't go to college."

Healthy cognitive functioning means we can clearly think, learn and remember. Significant cognitive decline is a sign of Alzheimer's and other dementia-related disorders, while a smaller degree of cognitive decline is a normal part of aging.

"Dementia develops over a much longer period than people realize," she said. "What happens in childhood, adolescence and early adulthood can set the stage for dementia risk decades later.

The protective effects of education appear to extend beyond how many years of education people get or what degrees they earn. The quality of education and what people get out of it in terms of skills and abilities to learn and adapt to new challenges matters at least as much."

Muller is also interested in determining how education might help people become more resilient as they grow older. Findings from this sort of study could benefit people who are at risk of Alzheimer's and other dementia disorders.

"By studying people who are at the cusp of later life - the point immediately preceding the age when we observe an uptick in the risk of dementia - we are seeing people who have very strong signs of resilience, in terms of their physical health and what their bodies can do, their cognitive functioning, their engagement in civic society and social relationships," Muller said. "And even biologically in markers that suggest protective processes against neurodegeneration."