TY  - JOUR
AU  - McMaster, Jessica M V
AU  - Gellersen, Helena M
AU  - Korkki, Saana M
AU  - Simons, Jon S
TI  - The impact of lifestyle restrictions on memory in older adults.
JO  - PLOS ONE
VL  - 21
IS  - 2
SN  - 1932-6203
CY  - San Francisco, California, US
PB  - PLOS
M1  - DZNE-2026-00202
SP  - e0342458
PY  - 2026
AB  - Engagement in a variety of lifestyle activities, such as intellectual stimulation, social interaction, and physical exercise, is thought to be a key contributor to cognitive reserve, helping the brain compensate for age-related or pathological changes. An open question is whether restrictions on lifestyle activities, even if relatively brief, might have detrimental effects on cognition. The COVID-19 pandemic led to unprecedented restrictions on the kinds of lifestyle activities that have been shown to be protective against age-related cognitive decline. In the present study, we captured changes in lifestyle and memory of older adults across the pandemic. Long-term memory was assessed using a task which allows for the estimation of both retrieval success and memory precision, the latter being particularly sensitive to age-related changes. Memory was assessed before the pandemic in person, and during the pandemic using an online version of the task. Experiment 1 first verified that younger adults' performance did not significantly differ between testing environments, validating pre- and post-pandemic comparison in older adults. Experiment 2 then demonstrated that while substantial declines in lifestyle engagement were observed during the pandemic in older adults, there was no significant correlation between these lifestyle changes and memory performance overall. However, when modelling retrieval success, lifestyle effects varied with dementia risk, consistent with cognitive reserve theory, as well as varying with depression. These findings highlight how different memory features are impacted by factors such as lifestyle, and support the proposal that heightened dementia risk may increase susceptibility to the impact of lifestyle changes.
KW  - Humans
KW  - Aged
KW  - Female
KW  - Male
KW  - COVID-19: epidemiology
KW  - COVID-19: psychology
KW  - Life Style
KW  - Middle Aged
KW  - Cognitive Reserve: physiology
KW  - Aged, 80 and over
KW  - SARS-CoV-2
KW  - Adult
KW  - Exercise
KW  - Young Adult
KW  - Memory
KW  - Pandemics
KW  - Memory, Long-Term: physiology
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
C6  - pmid:41701725
DO  - DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0342458
UR  - https://pub.dzne.de/record/285260
ER  -