Moderating effect of cognitive reserve on the association between grey matter atrophy and memory varies with age in older adults.

BACKGROUND: Educational attainment and verbal intelligence, which indirectly reflect an individual's cognitive reserve (CR), is suggested to buffer the effect of late-life brain degradation on cognitive performance outcome. We aimed to explore how the relationship between whole grey matter volume (GMV) and episodic memory function is altered by CR proxy as well as age in healthy older adults. METHODS: Elderly Verbal Learning Test (EVLT) and structural magnetic resonance imaging were administered to 110 community-residing older adults. Moderated moderation model tested whether the association between whole GMV and episodic memory was moderated by both CR and chronological age. RESULTS: The results showed that the moderating effect of CR on Immediate Recall, Short-delay Recall, and Recognition scores of EVLT differed across age groups. The elderly with higher CR showed steeper GMV effect on EVLT at the Age-Younger condition, while such moderating effect was reversed in the Age-Older condition, suggesting an alleviated brain atrophy effect in higher CR elderly. CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that although higher CR elderly may exhibit earlier GMV-related memory decline, the buffering effect of CR on the cognitive decline due to brain atrophy would become more evident in old-old elderly people who are likely to have accumulated more neuropathological changes. This study underscores chronological age as an important moderating factor in examining the moderating role of CR in late-life memory function.

Diversity and structure of intergenerational relationships: elderly parent-adult child relations in Korea.

Korean society has undergone a rapid demographic transition that has challenged traditional patterns of family exchanges. The structure and directions of support flows have become more complex as multiple generations coexist. This article examines the complexity of contemporary Korean intergenerational relationships. The study analyzed two different samples to address anticipated differences in perceptions of and attitudes toward relationships between adult children and elderly parents. The researchers used maximum likelihood latent structure analysis to discover the latent patterns of the association among three main subdimensions of intergenerational relationships: geographic proximity, exchange of support, and cultural norms of family support. Results show that the perspectives on intergenerational relationships differ significantly between middle-aged children and elderly parents. Intergenerational relationships among middle-aged adults comprise five distinct patterns: strong reciprocal, strong traditional, intermediate normative, intermediate circumstantial, and weak. The interpretation of intergenerational relationships from the elders' perspectives is more straightforward, with only three patterns: traditional, reciprocal, and weak. Along with significant socioeconomic differences in the prevalent patterns of intergenerational relationships, these results emphasize the complex interplay of contingency and path dependency in diversifying the value and support exchanges of intergenerational relationships.