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“we have done studies showing who’s at risk of developing dementia, but those other studies were looking at the clinical diagnosis,” antonio terracciano, professor of geriatrics at the university, told fsu’s news outlet . “here, we are looking at the neuropathology; that is, the lesions in the brain that tell us about the underlying pathological change. this study shows that even before clinical dementia, personality predicts the accumulation of pathology associated with dementia.”
the study, published in the journal biological psychiatry , was a meta-analysis that summarized the results of 12 different studies on alzheimer’s and personality, with a combined total of more than 3,000 participants. overall, researchers found more amyloid and tau deposits in people who scored high in neuroticism and low in conscientiousness. (they defined neuroticism as a predisposition for negative emotions, and conscientiousness as the tendency to be careful, organized, goal-directed and responsible.)
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amyloid and tau are both normal proteins that naturally occur in the brain. but people with alzheimer’s disease have abnormally high levels of the proteins , which clump together to form tangles that then disrupt brain and body communication.
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more than 700,000 canadians have alzheimer’s disease. in ten years, that number is expected to grow to 1.4 million.
