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@ARTICLE{McMaster:285260,
author = {McMaster, Jessica M V and Gellersen, Helena M and Korkki,
Saana M and Simons, Jon S},
title = {{T}he impact of lifestyle restrictions on memory in older
adults.},
journal = {PLOS ONE},
volume = {21},
number = {2},
issn = {1932-6203},
address = {San Francisco, California, US},
publisher = {PLOS},
reportid = {DZNE-2026-00202},
pages = {e0342458},
year = {2026},
abstract = {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.},
keywords = {Humans / Aged / Female / Male / COVID-19: epidemiology /
COVID-19: psychology / Life Style / Middle Aged / Cognitive
Reserve: physiology / Aged, 80 and over / SARS-CoV-2 / Adult
/ Exercise / Young Adult / Memory / Pandemics / Memory,
Long-Term: physiology},
cin = {AG Berron},
ddc = {610},
cid = {I:(DE-2719)5000070},
pnm = {353 - Clinical and Health Care Research (POF4-353)},
pid = {G:(DE-HGF)POF4-353},
typ = {PUB:(DE-HGF)16},
pubmed = {pmid:41701725},
doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0342458},
url = {https://pub.dzne.de/record/285260},
}