entitled Cognitive Aging: Progress in Understanding and

Opportunities for Action, which addresses the emerging concept of cognitive aging, the importance of this issue for the nation’s public health, and actions the nation needs to take to better understand and maintain the cognitive health of older adults.1 Cognitive aging is a lifelong process of gradual, on-going, yet highly variable changes in cognitive function that occur as people get older. Some cognitive func-tions decrease predictably, such as memory and reac-tiontime,whereassomeother functionsareeithermain-tained or may even increase, such as wisdom and knowledge. Characteristics of cognitive aging are pre-sented in the Box. Cognitiveaging isnotadiseaseoraquantifiable level of dysfunction. It is distinct fromAlzheimerdisease an