Study: Cognitively stimulating jobs help us maintain brain health as we age, delaying the onset of cognitive impairment and dementia

Work­place learn­ing could be a boon for well­ness, research shows (HR DIVE):

Learn­ing and devel­op­ment in the work­place could be a boon for well­ness, new research sug­gests. Doing cog­ni­tive­ly demand­ing work can delay the onset of brain decline and even demen­tia at an old­er age, accord­ing to the study pub­lished April 17 in the jour­nal Neurology.

On the oth­er hand, hav­ing a job with rou­tine tasks and lim­it­ed men­tal stim­u­la­tion dur­ing ages 30–65 was linked to a 37% greater risk of demen­tia after age 70, the study authors found.

“This study sup­ports the ‘cog­ni­tive reserve hypoth­e­sis,’ which basi­cal­ly states that the more you use your brain dur­ing ear­ly and mid-life, the bet­ter equipped you are to ward off demen­tia and cog­ni­tive decline lat­er in life,” senior author Bjørn Heine Strand, a researcher at the Nor­we­gian Insti­tute of Pub­lic Health, said in a statement…

Cross-train­ing, which may also help work­ers build cog­ni­tive demand, can fur­ther broad­en work­ers’ skill sets and pro­vide sched­ul­ing flex­i­bil­i­ty, accord­ing to Wal­mart exec­u­tives, who have launched an ini­tia­tive to cross-train store asso­ciates. The pro­gram is based on sim­i­lar efforts at Sam’s Club and Neigh­bor­hood Mar­ket loca­tions, where cross-train­ing has become a major part of the company’s future tal­ent strategy.

Less demen­tia among occu­pa­tion­al groups with cog­ni­tive­ly demand­ing jobs (state­ment by the researchers):

The study, pub­lished in the jour­nal Neu­rol­o­gy, assessed the impact of occu­pa­tion­al cog­ni­tive demands on the risk of mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment and demen­tia among over 7000 par­tic­i­pants in the HUNT4 70+ cohort (link to the HUNT study web­page) in Norway.

The study is an asso­ci­a­tion study and does not pro­vide any defin­i­tive infor­ma­tion about the cause of demen­tia, as many fac­tors are involved.

The researchers divid­ed the par­tic­i­pants into four groups accord­ing to the amount of rou­tine tasks in their occu­pa­tions dur­ing their 30, 40s, 50s and 60s, and com­pared the risk of cog­ni­tive decline in these groups after the age of 70. The researchers also took into account oth­er impor­tant risk fac­tors of demen­tia, includ­ing age, sex, edu­ca­tion, income, phys­i­cal and men­tal health and lifestyle.

After adjust­ing for age, sex and edu­ca­tion the researchers found that the group with more rou­tine tasks in their occu­pa­tions had a 37% high­er risk of demen­tia after the age of 70.

The Study:

Tra­jec­to­ries of Occu­pa­tion­al Cog­ni­tive Demands and Risk of Mild Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment and Demen­tia in Lat­er Life (Neu­rol­o­gy). From the Abstract:

• Back­ground and Objec­tives: The cog­ni­tive reserve hypoth­e­sis posits that cog­ni­tive­ly stim­u­lat­ing work delays the onset of mild cog­ni­tive impair­ment (MCI) and demen­tia. How­ev­er, the effect of occu­pa­tion­al cog­ni­tive demands across midlife on the risk of these con­di­tions is unclear.
• Results: Based on lon­gi­tu­di­nal RTI scores (Note: Rou­tine Task Inten­si­ty — the high­er the score the more rou­tine the job, the low­er the score the more cog­ni­tive­ly demand­ing)  for 305 unique occu­pa­tions, 4 RTI tra­jec­to­ry groups were iden­ti­fied … Par­tic­i­pants in the high RTI group had a high­er risk of MCI (Note: Mild Cog­ni­tive Impair­ment) and demen­tia, after adjust­ing for age, sex, and edu­ca­tion com­pared with par­tic­i­pants in the low RTI group. In a sen­si­tiv­i­ty analy­sis, con­trol­ling for income and base­line health-relat­ed fac­tors, the point esti­mates were not appre­cia­bly changed.
• Dis­cus­sion: Peo­ple with a his­to­ry of cog­ni­tive­ly stim­u­lat­ing occu­pa­tions dur­ing their 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s had a low­er risk of MCI and demen­tia old­er than 70 years, high­light­ing the impor­tance of occu­pa­tion­al cog­ni­tive stim­u­la­tion dur­ing midlife for main­tain­ing cog­ni­tive func­tion in old age. Fur­ther research is required to pin­point the spe­cif­ic occu­pa­tion­al cog­ni­tive demands that are most advan­ta­geous for main­tain­ing lat­er-life cog­ni­tive function.

The Study in Context:

• Build Your Cog­ni­tive Reserve: An Inter­view with Dr. Yaakov Stern
• How learn­ing changes your brain
• Brain Health At Work: New offer­ing to refresh & enhance work­place Men­tal Health and Tal­ent pro­grams in large organizations