Medical News

Swedish Study Says Mental Skills Start Fading Earlier Than Thought

By Saikat ⋅ August 28, 2008 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅ Post a comment

It will be upon us one day. The not so ephemeral time when our mental faculties start to age and whither. For some, the process has already begun. Now, a Swedish study has found out that the time when this begins to happen could be earlier than previously thought. The study concured that older people’s mental skill even without progressive dementia starts declining years before their death.

The start of the decline varies for various mind body abilities. Perceptual speed, which measures how quickly people can compare figures, begins declining nearly 15 years before death. Spatial ability starts declining nearly eight years before death. And verbal ability starts declining about six-and-a-half years before death. The results were concluded after some simple cognition tests undertaken on the study subjects.

The study involved 288 people, men and women with no dementia who were tracked from age 70 to death, with an average mortality age of 84. The participants’ mental skills were measured up to 12 times over a period of 30 years, and they were examined to make sure they had not developed dementia.

Valgeir Thorvaldsson, a psychologist at Gothenburg University in Sweden who worked on the study had this to say,

“There is substantial acceleration in cognitive decline many years prior to death among individuals without dementia. We found accelerated changes in people’s mental skills that indicated a terminal decline phase years before death.”

Thorvaldsson went on to explain that a number of factors were behind the rapid and terminal deterioration of the mental skills.

“Cardiovascular conditions such as heart disease or dementia that is too early to be detected could be factors. Increased health problems and frailty in old age often lead to inactivity, and this lack of exercise and mental stimulation could accelerate mental decline.”

The study provides several early warning signs for spotting severe health problems as a person approaches old age. Change in verbal ability is an important one. As a person entered the critical ‘terminal phase’ of life their is a marked decline in verbal ability. And this is not due to just old age alone. The researchers have noted that this change could signal disease processes that trigger the terminal period of mortality.

The non dementia related findings of the study are important indicators for medical professionals to recognize possible degeneration of mental health among their elderly patients.

The study was supported by the Swedish Brain Power and the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research. Organizations which seek to better early diagnosis and treatment of patients with degenerative neural diseases.

Source: Reuters
Image: Flickr.com

Tags: dementia, elderly, mental, study