IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/geronb/v77y2022i1p94-103..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Comparing the Effects of Two Cardiovascular Health Factors on Working Memory Capacity in Healthy Aging: Separate and Combined Effects of Arterial Elasticity and Physical Fitness

Author

Listed:
  • Shuo Qin
  • Chandramallika Basak

Abstract

ObjectivesArterial elasticity and physical fitness are 2 important cardiovascular health factors that influence cognition in older adults. Working memory capacity (WMC), a core component underlying cognitive aging across many cognitive domains, may be affected by individual differences in cardiovascular health in older adults. This study aims to identify in older adults: (a) separate and combined effects of these 2 cardiovascular health factors on WMC and (b) which of the 2 factors is more critical in influencing WMC.MethodsWMC in 89 healthy older adults was assessed by 2 complex span tasks. Arterial elasticity was assessed by pulse pressure (PsP). Physical fitness was measured by an established proxy of VO2 max (MET). Effects of PsP and MET on WMC were evaluated via step-wise regressions.ResultsAfter controlling for age, sex, and education, PsP and MET were separately predictive of WMC in older adults. Together, the combined effect of PsP and MET was more predictive of WMC than fitness alone, but not more than PsP alone. Mediation analysis indicates that the relationship between MET and WMC was completely mediated by PsP.DiscussionThis study innovatively demonstrates that though arterial elasticity and physical fitness separately predict WMC, the former completely mediates the relationship between fitness and WMC. This suggests that biologically based cardiovascular health factors like arterial elasticity are crucial individual difference variables that should be measured and monitored in cognitive aging studies as well as in physical interventions that are designed to improve cognition in healthy aging.

Suggested Citation

  • Shuo Qin & Chandramallika Basak, 2022. "Comparing the Effects of Two Cardiovascular Health Factors on Working Memory Capacity in Healthy Aging: Separate and Combined Effects of Arterial Elasticity and Physical Fitness," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 77(1), pages 94-103.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:77:y:2022:i:1:p:94-103.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gbab071
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:77:y:2022:i:1:p:94-103.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.