How quickly people age during midlife predicted memory lapses 10 years later
Most people occasionally misplace their car keys or forget a dentist's appointment, especially as they get older. When memory lapses occur regularly and interfere with daily life, however, they could be a sign of a serious decline in a person’s cognitive ability, according to David Almeida,…
PRI Population Science Fall Seminar Series kicks off
The Population Research Institute (PRI) and the Collaborative on Population Aging Disparities will host the Population Science Seminar Series this fall, featuring hour-long talks from scholars whose research examines population dynamics and the social forces that shape them. The series brings…
Penn State to co-lead national brain health and dementia prevention initiative
Scientists at Penn State, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the University of Southern California and other institutions have formed a new research network to detect the earliest signs of dementia years before symptoms emerge. The Open Measures Network Initiative for Alzheimer’s Disease and…
Chronic loneliness may harm cognitive health in young adults
Young and middle-aged adults who live with chronic loneliness may be at risk for early cognitive decline, according to a new study by researchers in the Penn State Department of Human Development and Family Studies. In a study published in BMC Public Health, the researchers demonstrated that young…
Insomnia and sleep medication use connected to disability in older adults
Insomnia is a significant health and quality of life concern for older adults, with up to half of all adults over the age of 65 experiencing insomnia symptoms. In a new study, researchers in the Penn State College of Health and Human Development and at Taipei Medical University analyzed five years…
Understanding aging requires more than counting birthdays
People’s bodies can be old or young for their chronological age, depending, in part, on the amount and types of stressors they have experienced. Scientists can estimate people’s biological age, but whether they use oral tissue or blood to make the measurement matters, according to a new study led…
New SSRI Working Group - Collaborative on Population Aging Disparities
Collaborative on Population Aging Disparities The Collaborative on Population Aging Disparities (CoPAD) is an SSRI-funded working group that focuses on new and growing sources of inequality among aging adults, with attention to the ways that population dynamics and life course processes interact to…
Cognitive decline and loneliness linked in older adults over short time periods
For years, research has shown that older adults who are lonely are at greater risk for cognitive decline and conditions like Alzheimer's disease. Those studies, however, generally treated loneliness as a stable trait of someone’s life, but loneliness fluctuates from day to day and even over the…
Damaske featured on in Atlantic article on retirement
Retirement Gets Harder the Longer You Wait For men like Joe Biden—highly educated, employed past 65, strongly tied to work—stepping away can pose its own risks to health and happiness. By Charley Locke When President Joe Biden announced on Sunday that he was ending his campaign for reelection, he…