A role for nutrition in healthy brain aging

Nutritional cognitive neuroscience is an emerging interdisciplinary field of research that seeks to understand nutrition’s impact on cognition and brain health across the life span. While accumulating evidence indicates healthy cognitive aging is dependent upon both brain health and nutritional status, the relationship between nutrition, cognition, and brain structure and function remains to be elucidated. Methods that sensitively measure variability in nutritional status, cognition, and brain health are critical to clarifying the role of nutrition in healthy brain aging. This dissertation therefore employs a multidisciplinary approach that integrates cutting-edge techniques from nutritional epidemiology and cognitive neuroscience. The experiments presented herein define mediatory relationships between nutrition, cognition, and underlying brain structure and function in a sample of healthy, older adults. This research program investigates the role of nutrition in healthy brain aging, applying methods that examine: (i) specific nutrient biomarkers, and (ii) a broader profile of nutrient biomarker patterns. Chapters two through four investigate the role of individual nutrients on cognitive performance and identify specific brain regions whose structural integrity mediates this relationship. Chapters five through seven broaden the scope of this investigation to assess the role of nutrient biomarker patterns in cognition and to examine their influence of specific structural and functional brain networks. Taken together, the results of this research program suggest that specific nutrients and nutrient groups may slow or prevent aspects of age-related cognitive decline by influencing particular age-related changes in brain health. This line of research strives to elucidate the nature of healthy cognitive aging and ultimately inform clinical nutritional interventions for healthy brain aging