Summary: A major longitudinal study challenges the common assumption that higher education slows the rate of brain aging.
Source: Norwegian Institute of Public Health
New research from the Lifebrain consortium at the University of Oslo indicates that higher education does not slow the biological aging of the brain.
“These results suggest that higher education does not influence the pace of brain aging,” says Lars Nyberg of Umeå University in Sweden, first author of the study and a member of the Lifebrain consortium.
All brains shrink at roughly the same rate
It is well established that brain tissue declines with age, and a prevailing belief has been that more years of formal education might slow that decline. Previous studies provided mixed evidence because most lacked repeated measurements that track individual change over time. This new study addresses that gap by using longitudinal MRI data to observe how brain structure changes within the same people across years.
Long-term MRI measurements of cortical and hippocampal volume
The researchers assessed brain aging by measuring volumes of the cortical mantle and the hippocampus—regions known to show age-related shrinkage—using MRI scans from more than 2,000 participants drawn from the Lifebrain and UK Biobank datasets. Participants underwent up to three scans over an interval of as much as 11 years, enabling the team to estimate rates of change in brain volume directly rather than inferring change from cross-sectional comparisons.
“What sets this study apart is the large-scale, longitudinal design with replication in an independent sample,” Nyberg explains. “It is one of the largest studies to examine how education relates to change in brain structure over time.”
Participants included adults ranging from 29 to 91 years old. The team compared how quickly brain regions shrank in people who had completed higher education before age 30 with those who had not.
Education linked to modestly larger brain volume, but not to slower decline
The analyses showed that while higher educational attainment was associated with slightly larger cortical volume in certain regions when measured at a single point in time, education did not affect the rate at which those regions lost volume over the follow-up period. In other words, individuals with more education started with a small advantage in volume in some areas, but that advantage did not translate into slower brain aging.
“This does not mean education lacks value,” emphasizes Anders Fjell of the University of Oslo, a senior author on the paper. “Education is associated with many life advantages, but our results do not establish a causal link from education to slower structural brain aging. It is possible that people who go on to higher education already have modestly larger brain volumes earlier in life, which could help delay clinical symptoms of dementia or other age-related cognitive decline.”
Fjell concludes: “Ultimately, everyone’s brain shows age-related shrinkage, and our data indicate that the speed of that shrinkage is not meaningfully altered by how many years of formal education a person has completed.”
About the study and authors
Lars Nyberg is professor of neuroscience and director of the Umeå Center for Functional Brain Imaging (UFBI) in Sweden and a professor II at the Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Norway. Anders Fjell is professor of cognitive psychology at the Center for Lifespan Changes in Brain and Cognition, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, and a researcher at Oslo University Hospital’s Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine.
The research was conducted in collaboration with multiple international institutions, including Copenhagen University Hospital Amager and Hvidovre, the University of Barcelona, University of Lübeck, the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, the Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, Vitas AS, the University of Oxford, the University of Geneva, the University of Cambridge, VU University Medical Centre Amsterdam, Oslo University Hospital and University Clinic Hamburg-Eppendorf.
Funding: This project received support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 732592.
About this education and neuroscience research news
Source: Norwegian Institute of Public Health
Contact: Lars Nyberg – Norwegian Institute of Public Health
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: Open access.
“Educational attainment does not influence brain aging” by Lars Nyberg et al., published in PNAS.
Abstract
Educational attainment does not influence brain aging
Education is associated with numerous beneficial life outcomes. Using longitudinal structural MRI data (4,422 observations), this study tested the influential hypothesis that higher education leads to slower rates of brain aging. Cross-sectional analyses showed a modest association between education and regional cortical volume. However, despite clear mean atrophy in the cortex and hippocampus with age, education did not affect rates of change. The results replicated across two independent samples, challenging the view that higher education slows brain aging.