Seminar Series 10: Lecture 3 - Prof Ian Deary
Healthy Cognitive Ageing
Scotland is uniquely placed to investigate the determinants of healthy mental ageing. On 1st June 1932, almost every child born in 1921 and attending Scottish schools took the same general mental ability test. The exercise was repeated on 4th June 1947 for people born in 1936. These were the Scottish Mental Surveys of 1932 and 1947. They were largely unused between the late 1960s and the late 1990s. Beginning in the late 1990s, Prof Deary and his team have been following up on people who took part in the Scottish Mental Surveys to find out why some people's cognitive functions are better in old age than others.
This lecture described the research using the Lothian Birth Cohort studies of 1921 and 1936, and described how participants of the original surveys were re-contacted. Some recent results were presented and discussed. Among the factors that are considered with respect to people’s differences in cognitive ageing are: their childhood intelligence, and social, health, fitness, brain imaging, and genetic factors.
About the speaker
Prof Ian Deary
Professor of Differential Psychology, University of Edinburgh & Director of the Medical Research Council-administered Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology
Ian Deary is Professor of Differential Psychology at the University of Edinburgh, and Director of the Medical Research Council-administered Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology. His principal research interest is human mental abilities, especially: the origins of cognitive differences; the effects of ageing and medical conditions on mental skills; and the influence of intelligence on health and wellbeing through the life course. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the British Academy, the Academy of Medical Sciences, the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He held a Royal Society-Wolfson Research Merit Award (2003-2007) for his work on human cognitive ageing. In 2010 he received the Distinguished European Personality Psychologist Award from the European Association for Personality Psychology.
Prof Ian Deary seminar
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