In September, Mroczek received a renewal of his R01 grant. The project, which originally began in 2019, is entitled “Personality Prediction of Dementia Risk and Progression.” It expands its scope in the renewal period to study cognitive healthspan and cognitive resilience, as well as examining inflammatory and cardiometabolic mediators. Co-investigators include Eileen Graham, Jing Luo, and Katherina Hauner from the Medical Social Sciences Department.
What are the aims of the project?
Personality characteristics are emerging as consistent protective/risk factors in predicting dementia risk and progression. This competing renewal extends our previous work on the role of personality in cognitive healthspan (Aims 1, 3) and cognitive resilience (Aims 2, 3) and includes social support (SS). Both cognitive aging outcomes (healthspan, resilience) are directly linked to development and progression of Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD).
- Aim 1: Test the role of personality and SS (both cross-sectionally and over time) in cognitive healthspan using 10 longitudinal datasets. We ask how Big 5 personality traits (i.e., neuroticism [N], extraversion [E], conscientiousness [C], openness [O], and agreeableness [A]) and social support (SS) predict the course of ADRD through inflammatory and cardiometabolic markers, examining level and rate of change in each predictor.
- Aim 2: Interrogate questions about the direct and indirect role of personality and SS on cognitive resilience, using brain autopsies from 5 datasets. In Aim 2, we ask how personality, SS, and their change predict cognitive resilience (i.e., toleration of ADRD neuropathology) through inflammatory and cardiometabolic markers. Many older adults remain clinically free of dementia despite considerable presence of dementia-related pathology in their brains. Recent work has shown that personality traits (esp. N, C, O) are associated with such resilience1,2. Yet the pathways that connect personality to cognitive resilience are unclear. We will test associations between personality, SS, and cognitive resilience, using five datasets that include postmortem autopsy (a subset from Aim 1). We will also test cardiometabolic and inflammatory mediators as mechanisms linking personality traits and SS to cognitive resilience.
- Aim 3: Examine social disadvantage as a moderator of personality/SS-cognitive health associations. In Aim 3, we ask if the above associations with cognitive healthspan and resilience are contingent on economic or racial disadvantage. According to resource substitution theory, personality compensates for socioeconomic resources when lacking. We will test whether the predictor-outcome associations vary by SES and if they hold among Black Americans, a historically disadvantaged group making up 14% of our samples. We also will consider cardiometabolic and inflammatory mediating pathways in moderated mediation models.
What are your next steps?
Next, we will begin to write one or two papers on each of the three aims. We are hiring a new postdoc, and we hope that between the several Feinberg-based co-investigators and the postdoc, we will carry out analyses within the next few months and begin to write journal articles.
What do you hope will come out of this funded research?
I hope to bolster dementia prevention efforts by specifying how behavioral and psychological factors, such as personality traits and social connectedness can reduce the risk for ADRD. Targeted interventions based on personality traits or interventions designed to raise social connectedness may help reduce dementia risk or slow progression of the disease.
Read more about this project.
