Addressing inter-individual variability in aging: linking lifestyle factors to the brain and behaviour

Cognitive decline is associated with a variety of neurodegenerative disorders and is increasingly prevalent in Canada’s aging population. One of the most effective means to counteract cognitive decline is to maintain or enhance cognitive reserve. Lifestyle factors have been shown to impact cognitive reserve, but this impact varies highly across individuals. Most investigations into the effects of lifestyle factors on behavior and neural function do not capture this inter-individual variability and produced mixed, difficult to reproduce findings. This research aims to reduce this variability by clustering the population into sub-types based on their susceptibility to lifestyle changes before investigating the causal relationships between lifestyle factors, behaviour and neural function. The identified causal relationships will serve as promising targets for future clinical interventions in sub-types of our aging population that can limit the effects of cognitive decline and lower the rates of neurodegenerative diseases. In addition to the classical means of knowledge translation, this research will be shared through public presentations held by the Institute of Neuroscience and Neurotechnology at Simon Fraser University.