Will you Suffer from Dementia at Fifty? Your High School Aptitude Test will Tell.

JAMA, the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association has reported recently that the chances of dementia in people of fifty and older age are easy to detect from their adolescent age high school tests.  In this 1960 study of “Project Talent Test”, over half million school boys and girls participated from government as well as private American high schools as simple aptitude tests.

These test results were later collected as data mining technology was evolved in 21 st century.Its conclusions were startling that lower adolescent memory for words, in women, and lower mechanical reasoning, in men, were associated with higher odds of Alzheimer disease and related disorders in later life.

Specific cognitive abilities, such as language, reasoning, and visualization aptitudes in adolescents can determine older age dementia risks have been unknown to the science before, . Knowledge of such reports will help countries like India with a dreadfully large number of older population suffering from dementia, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases- deterioration of brain capacity. Doctors’ and neuro-physics specialists ‘offices and hospital wards are flooded with patients still not quiet understanding the disease and its after effects specifically in India. Increased life span made issue of aged population more critical.

Under this Project in 1960, it was the largest survey of teens ever done anywhere in the world.

Subjects covered were language, abstract reasoning, math, clerical skills, and visual understanding, and found that people with lower scores as teenagers were more likely to get Alzheimer’s and related dementia in their 50s, 60s and 70s.

It took extra ordinary effort for researchers to trace all test participants and their living status. Many had also died. Journal of the American Medical Association compared results for more than 85,000 test-takers with their 2012-2013 Medicare claims and expenditures data and found that those who suffered from dementia in 2012-13 had scored low on their aptitude test forty eight years ago. This discovery will prompt research towards how dementia can be fought if we know its probability at adolescence.