ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Cell. Neurosci.
Sec. Cellular Neurophysiology
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fncel.2025.1606451
This article is part of the Research TopicReserves in the CNS: Emerging Concepts and Future ProspectsView all articles
Buffering Brain Aging: Education Moderates Language Impairment in Parkinson's Disease
Provisionally accepted
- Department of Radiology, Kangbuk Samsung Hospital, Seoul, Republic of Korea
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Cognitive reserve (CR) refers to the discrepancy between brain pathology and observed cognitive decline. While education is a key indicator of CR, its role as a potential moderator in the relationships between brain morphology and cognitive impairments in Parkinson's disease (PD) remains unclear.This study examined whether education affects the relationship between brain age and cognitive impairments in patients with PD.Data from 58 patients with PD were analyzed using a secondary dataset from OpenNeuro. Participants aged ≥55 years were on stable medications and underwent standardized neuropsychological assessments. Brain age predictions were generated from T1-weighted MRI using the brainageR, and the brain age difference (BAD) was calculated after correction for regression dilution. The moderation effect of education on the relationship between BAD and cognition was assessed using Hayes' PROCESS macro. The primary outcome was cognitive performance across six domains: attention, executive function, language, learning and memory, visuospatial ability, and global cognition.Among the six domains, a significant moderation effect of education was found only for language ability (β = 0.01, p = 0.013, R² = 0.20). The relationship between BAD and language was steeper at lower education levels. No statistically significant moderation was found in the remaining five domains.Having more years of education is associated with buffering accelerated brain aging affecting language ability in PD.
Keywords: Brain age, Parkinson ' s disease, Education, Moderation analyses, Cognitive Reserve, Language function
Received: 05 Apr 2025; Accepted: 04 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kim. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Minchul Kim, Department of Radiology, Kangbuk Samsung Hospital, Seoul, Republic of Korea
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