Our psychological profile offers clues to future risks and seriousness of cognitive decline, which can someday inform customized preventive strategies.
“The goal was to reveal how various combinations of psychological characteristics are related to mental, cognitive and brain health.” explain Barcelona University Psychologist David Bartrés-Faz.
“To date, psychological risks and protection factors have been almost exclusively independently investigated. This approach is limited because there is no psychological properties alone.”
Bartrés-Faz and colleagues conducted a survey of more than 1,000 middle-aged adults from more than 1,000 middle-aged adults and used the results to classify individuals into three psychological types based on similar characteristics.
Profile 1 has a low score for items that are considered ‘protection factors’, including self -reflection, outgoing, friendship, openness, sincerity and life’s purpose. Profile 2 Profile 3 has a high protection and slightly lower risk, while Profile 3 features high negative risks.
More than 500 of the participants collected cognition and MRI data at the start of the experiment, and after 2.3 years later, they were taken again during follow -up measures.
People in Profile 1 had the lowest score for protection factors, so the level of openness, extroversion and friendship for sincerity, experience was low. They scored the lowest in cognitive tests and measured the highest brain atrophy in subsequent tests.
“In both clinical pathology and brain imaging studies, it was shown that the recovery of brain pathology was greater in terms of the impact of individuals with a high purpose of life.” Paper.
Participants in Profile 2 maintained the highest level of depression and anxiety in the early and subsequent stages of the study, with the highest memory problems and the highest dementia risk score.
Surprisingly, however, they did not show a noticeable difference in cognitive testing and cortical thickness compared to the people of profile 2, who had more balanced psychological characteristics during the tracking period, except for anxiety and depression.
The researchers warn that further studies are required for larger samples to verify these results. Link Profile 2 psychological characteristics and Cognition Be Well -established In past studies.
The exact reason why this relationship exists is not clear. It is important to keep in mind that the pain caused by the combination of psychological characteristics may seem like a reasonable cause, but psychological properties are often formed by external stress and experience.
This is why it is closely related to poverty and/or trauma. This is because it worsens dangerous psychological characteristics, from worrying to full anxiety.
The genetic impact of some characteristics may also play a role in lowering protection levels or increasing risks.
However, the results are all recommended in the papers that the results emphasize the need to evaluate both stress and protection factors.
They are likely to benefit most of the treatment that helps people in profile 1 to identify their purpose such as acceptance and dedication treatment, while the group 2 profiles are likely to respond better to pain reduction treatment. do.
Effective treatment can reduce the social and economic impacts of dementia over the next decades.
This study is Natural mental health.
