The Quality of Older Adults' Neighborhoods

We all live somewhere. For the people of the world, where we have to or choose to live is impacted by many factors. Not all geographic locations or neighborhoods are equally resourced. The Area Deprivation Index (ADI) is a tool used to characterize the level of disadvantage within a particular zip code/area in the United States. The index uses indicators based on the U.S. census information for poverty, education, housing, and employment numbers of different neighborhoods.

Older adults may reside in higher or lower ADI neighborhoods. Researchers were interested in ADI levels' relationship to older adults' 1) brain volumes, 2) potential cognitive differences between older women and older men, and 3) quality of visuo-spatial, working, and verbal memory (Wright et. al, 2024). The 65+ aged adults were pre-screened for neuropsychiatric indicators (including psychosis, depression, and Alzheimer's disease), cardiometabolic indicators, and several acute and chronic physical conditions to ensure that persons with such conditions were not included in the study. Such conditions may have impacted brain volume and/or performance on the memory tests. The researchers' hypotheses regarding ADI influence and possible gender differences in brain volume and memory performance represent biosocial and cultural neuroscientific considerations.

Neighborhood matters for older adults' cognition and brain health.

Source: Michelle Henderson/Unsplash

Based on the historic cultural and systemic disenfranchisement of older women relative to older men it was reasonable that researchers predicted ADI and gender-based cognitive and brain volume differences. However, this hypothesis was not supported. The men and women were not differentially impacted. They were similarly negatively impacted on one of the memory tests and for one specific area of the brain.

Working Memory and the Hippocampus

ADI was significantly and modestly relevant to older adults' inability to maintain attentional control as required on the working memory test. The research also showed specific reduced volume (according to MRI) in the area of the hippocampus. The researchers interpreted this hippocampal reduction as possibly relevant to the level of stress in their neighborhoods.

Conclusions

Although some findings were as predicted, some were not. The researchers suggested that long term continuous follow-up research with such older adults might provide better quality information. Researchers also mentioned that the women of their study were well-educated relative to the general population of older women; this was despite the fact that the women still lived in higher ADI neighborhoods relative to older men. The researchers did not find that the older adults were compromised in their verbal memory nor visuo-spatial memory. Researchers speculated that perhaps this was because these tasks allow use of short term and long term memory faculties; whereas working memory is short term only and could be more susceptible to less than optimal conditions happening in and around a deprived area.

Older adults and their families should be attentive to the multiple factors that can be used to determine a neighborhood's level of deprivation. Area deprivation may relate to stress and to attentional distraction, which have implications for a healthy hippocampus and optimal mental focus.

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