Comment by wisty
7 hours ago
A better low effort contrarian comment - isn't it that early symptoms appear less often with people with a "reserve"?
Being mentally active (or physically active?) IIRC makes actual plaques both less likely, but also less detectable - a taxi driver can forget 90% of what they know and still not get diagnosed because they don't get lost on the way to the shops. Also they are often masters of small talk.
This would suggest they'd need to control for method by which the alzheimer's was discovered. A quick glance seems to indicate they did not do this. This is not information available I guess..
I would suspect this would eliminate a lot of the experiments participants, as only people who go for regular cognitive check-ups might be eligible?
I cannot imagine there would be many people left who'd be eligible. I can only think of 1 person that does it.. and he obviously does it for the pure satisfaction of acing those cognitive tests, and not because he is showing worrying amounts of decline in his mental faculties.