Cognitive Diversity in a Healthy Aging Cohort: Cross-Domain Cognition in the Cam-CAN Project.

Studies of "healthy" cognitive aging often focus on a limited set of measures that decline with age. The current study argues that defining and supporting healthy cognition requires understanding diverse cognitive performance across the lifespan. Data from the Cambridge Centre for Aging and Neuroscience (Cam-CAN) cohort was examined across a range of cognitive domains. Performance was related to lifestyle including education, social engagement, and enrichment activities. Results indicate variable relationships between cognition and age (positive, negative, or no relationship). Principal components analysis indicated maintained cognitive diversity across the adult lifespan, and that cognition-lifestyle relationships differed by age and domain. Our findings support a view of normal cognitive aging as a lifelong developmental process with diverse relationships between cognition, lifestyle, and age. This reinforces the need for large-scale studies of cognitive aging to include a wider range of both ages and cognitive tasks.