CEN Kolloquium: Simon Cox, Predictors of neurocognitive ageing across time and space

I will cover the ways in which we have attempted to understand how and why people differ in the speed and extent of brain and cognitive ageing. Our results show that the brain regions most susceptible to ageing are also those most important for complex cognition, and those most vulnerable to potentially modifiable factors such as vascular risk. However, when multiple correlated predictors of these changes are considered simultaneously, a picture of marginal gains rather than magic bullets emerges: evidence for many small unique effects rather than few major contributors.

These findings suggest that neurocognitive ageing is best understood as the product of a complex system of influences operating across the life course. Such influences are distributed not only across biological domains, but also across the environments in which people live. Understanding ageing therefore requires attention to both time and space: how exposures accumulate across decades, and how the social and physical characteristics of places become biologically embedded in the ageing human.

Speaker bio:
Professor Simon Cox is a cognitive neuropsychologist by training. His research interests span multi-cohort neuroimaging, cognitive, multi-omics and other data to understand how and why people differ in their brain and cognitive ageing. He received a 5-year Sir Henry Dale Fellowship from Wellcome and the Royal Society in 2021, and took on Directorship of the Lothian Birth Cohort Studies (on which he has worked for more than 17 years) in 2020, which he leads from the new Edinburgh Futures Institute, a flagship collaborative hub at the University of Edinburgh. He was appointed Personal Chair of Brain and Cognitive Ageing in the Psychology Department in 2024.

Join remotely via WebEx: https://mpib-berlin.webex.com/mpib-berlin/j.php?MTID=maff3dee0ad54cb921191ff33d0b92347

Meeting number: 2744 645 6180

Password: ArpQMePJ352