Rodrigues Emma A, Moreno Sylvain
School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Simon Fraser University, Surrey, BC, Canada.
Circle Innovation, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2023 Sep 13;17:1240630. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2023.1240630. eCollection 2023.
The interest in healthy cognitive aging (HCA) has increased substantially over the past decade. Researchers are interested in exploring how health can be promoted and cognitive decline mitigated when pathology is not present. Identifying the necessary strategies is crucial as the gradual accumulation of small declines can lead to negative effects on quality of life over time. However, the conceptualization of HCA is not agreed upon. In fact, authors often turn to the use of traditional pathology screeners in the context of HCA because of their clear threshold results and their wide use in the different fields. This leads to the assumption that individuals are either cognitively unhealthy and therefore may have some form of dementia or are dementia-free and cognitively healthy. We believe that this view is an overly simplistic approach to the understanding of the aging process. In this work, we explore how HCA has been defined and conceptualized within the different fields. We further discuss how time and variability are key concepts that are often missing when studying HCA and propose a definition that aims to unify the findings from the multidisciplinary research that studies HCA and simplify the translation of knowledge. Incorporating these two novel dimensions to the study of HCA has already been proposed methodologically but has yet been discussed at the conceptual level. We believe that the proposed new approach will allow the identification of individual factors that cause changes in cognitive health and will help build new cognitive health strategies and mitigate further declines.
在过去十年中，人们对健康认知老化（HCA）的兴趣大幅增加。研究人员感兴趣的是，在不存在病理状况的情况下，如何促进健康并减轻认知衰退。随着微小衰退的逐渐累积可能会随着时间的推移对生活质量产生负面影响，确定必要的策略至关重要。然而，对于HCA的概念尚未达成共识。事实上，由于传统病理筛查工具的结果具有明确的阈值且在不同领域广泛使用，作者们在HCA的背景下常常求助于使用这些工具。这导致一种假设，即个体要么认知不健康，因此可能患有某种形式的痴呆症，要么没有痴呆症且认知健康。我们认为，这种观点是对衰老过程理解的一种过于简单化的方法。在这项工作中，我们探讨了HCA在不同领域是如何被定义和概念化的。我们进一步讨论了时间和变异性如何成为研究HCA时经常缺失的关键概念，并提出了一个旨在统一研究HCA的多学科研究结果并简化知识转化的定义。在研究HCA的方法上已经有人提出纳入这两个新维度，但在概念层面尚未进行讨论。我们相信，所提出的新方法将有助于识别导致认知健康变化的个体因素，并将有助于构建新的认知健康策略并减轻进一步的衰退。
