Most people occasionally misplace their car keys or forget a dentist's appointment, especially as they get older. When memory lapses occur regularly and interfere with daily life, however, they could be a sign of a serious decline in a person's cognitive ability, according to David Almeida, distinguished professor of human development and family studies at Penn State. In a new study published in The Journals of Gerontology: Series A, Almeida and his collaborators found that people who aged faster during midlife were more likely to experience memory lapses a decade later.
The researchers examined whether a person's biological age during their forties and fifties could predict memory lapses later in life.
"Biological aging basically means that your biology looks older than your birthday would suggest. We can see this in chemical changes around our DNA that provide a kind of molecular record of how the body is aging," said Almeida, senior author of the study. "Many of these tests are like your car's odometer - they tell you how far you've gone in terms of age and how much aging-related change has accumulated. In this study, the useful measure turned out to be more like a car's speedometer - a measure of how fast your body is aging during midlife."
