Cognition and Dementia

Unique contributions and highlights

Research line staff members are active contributors to De Maastricht Studie (DMS), a comprehensive phenotyping study on 10,000 people aged 40-75 years in the Maastricht and Heuvelland region, including data on medical and lifestyle factors, cognitive function and brain MRI. DMS is becoming a leading resource for our epidemiological work into determinants of brain health and underlying biological pathways, including the role of maintenance factors of neural reserve.

In addition, The Maastricht Ageing Study (MAAS) is an observational cohort study with repeated assessments of health, lifestyle, cognitive functions and incident dementia spanning the completely adult age range. MAAS continues to be a major source for new studies into determinants and course of cognitive ageing across the adult age range, including temporal studies into timing of exposure and onset of cognitive change. Studies are included in several large research consortia such as the ‘Cohort Studies of Memory in an International Consortium (COSMIC)’ harmonisation project and the “Geoscience and health cohort consortium (GECCO)” into shared environmental risk factors, allowing high-powered analyses of determinants of cognitive ageing and dementia.

Our main aim is to translate studies on modifiable risk factors into new preventive and public health strategies that serve the general population. We developed the ‘Lifestyle for Brain Health’ (LIBRA) index that shows someone’s room for improvement by adopting a healthy lifestyle. LIBRA has been implemented in the ‘MijnBreincoach’ app and the ‘We zijn zelf het medicijn’ public health campaign, which have both been adopted by (inter)national partners. In addition, we (co-)lead intervention studies into lifestyle-based primary and secondary prevention of cognitive decline in the FINGER-NL trial and the ABOARD-project.

Our focus is also to improve (access to) post-diagnostic care. The European Actifcare project aimed to understand determinants of access to formal dementia care using mixed methods (European cohort and interviews/focus groups, interaction with decision-makers). It revealed inequity in access to care, which was associated with lower quality of life. One of the recommendations was to adopt a key contact person (e.g. case manager). The COGNISANCE project will develop and implement a campaign to improve post-diagnostic support in an international context (including Australia, Canada, UK, the Netherlands and Poland). This is done with close involvement of people with dementia, informal carers and professional care providers.

The S-DeciDeD project focuses on improving joint decision-making regarding the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease in general practice. This is of particular importance because of the increasing efforts in early detection of AD pathology through novel biomarker/imaging techniques, which provides information on the probability to develop dementia.