More years of education linked to strong cognitive skills for 90-plus

A new study followed a group of 90-plus Finnish citizens for nearly half a century and found that participants who had more years of education under their belt demonstrated stronger cognitive skills.

The study showed that the participants were able to think and remember better. That is a bold claim about a mature age group where many assume decline is inevitable.

Education improves cognitive skills

People in their 90s are often at high risk for dementia, and that risk keeps rising with age. So, it is of significant benefit when a team tracks the same individuals for 48 years and reports which midlife factors still line up with sharper thinking at 90-plus.

“Education appears to have a long-lasting protective effect in cognitive aging,” wrote Anni Varjonen, Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland at the University of Helsinki (FIMM), who led the work.

The project used a twin cohort, which gives a clearer look at life course patterns than one-time snapshots. It focused on thinking skills that were practical and able to be measured by phone in older adults.

Study’s focus on 90-plus

Ninety-six adults, ages 90 to 97, completed short memory and language tasks. The tests included semantic fluency, a one-minute animal naming task, and immediate and delayed recall of a 10-word list.

The team also built a composite score, which averages performance across tasks into a single summary. They adjusted results for age, sex, years of school, and the apolipoprotein E genotype, a gene that can raise the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.

Midlife risk was summarized using the CAIDE study, a validated score that combines age, blood pressure, cholesterol, activity, and other basics.

The researchers also created an educational occupational score to capture the mental demands of work and the length of schooling. That metric is often used as a rough sign of the brain’s lifetime learning load.

Education’s link to cognitive skills

Individuals with 12 or more years of school performed better on all three thinking tests. The educational occupational score revealed the same results, tracking with stronger memory and language performance.

Midlife blood pressure showed an unexpected twist. Participants who reported high blood pressure in the 1970s scored higher on all tests than those with normal readings, and the composite score difference topped one standard deviation.

However, the blood pressure of 90-plus adults pointed in a different direction. High blood pressure in the 90s is linked to lower language scores and a lower composite score.

Education stimulates the brain

Lifelong learning seems to build cognitive reserve, a capacity that helps people cope with age-related brain changes without obvious symptoms.

International commission reports already rank limited schooling among the largest modifiable dementia risks worldwide.

The new finding extends that story. It suggests the benefits of education persist far longer than most studies have been able to show.

Hypertension linked to dementia

The midlife blood pressure pattern is not a green light to ignore hypertension, which is linked to dementia and other issues.

The researchers suggest that people who learned about their high blood pressure readings decades ago may have started treatment early, which may have helped protect their brains.

There is also the chance of survival and selection effects in a small sample.

People who reach 90-plus are a select group, and their risk patterns can differ from those in their 60s and 70s. Late-life, high blood pressure readings may reflect illness or weight loss rather than a cause of decline.

BMI and cholesterol improvements ruled out

Body mass index and cholesterol did not show consistent links with thinking at 90-plus.

Total CAIDE scores did not predict performance at this age, which fits the idea that a midlife score built to predict 20-year dementia risk may not fit nonagenarians (people between 90 and 99 years old).

Physical activity at 90-plus was also not a reliable marker of better memory in this sample. One analysis even tied higher activity in adults within the 90-plus range to lower delayed recall; a result that the authors handled with caution.

Education is key to strong minds

The participant study lasted up to 48 years; a rare timeline in aging research. Repeated measures across adulthood let the team separate midlife patterns from late-life snapshots.

The twin cohort improves consistency across childhood and early environment, which helped researchers try to isolate the effects of education versus the many other forces that shape a life.

The study was small, and many estimates have wide uncertainty. Phone testing on adults over the age of 90 can add noise due to hearing, attention, and fatigue.

Survivor bias likely plays a role, because participants who lived to 90-plus were not typical of the population at large.

The researchers did not correct for multiple comparisons, so some links could be chance.

Education pays off for brain health

The simplest message is that education pays off for brain health, even very late in life.

School is not the only path, since adult education, job complexity, and hobbies that challenge the mind can also stimulate the brain over decades.

People should still control their blood pressure, cholesterol, and watch for diabetes; steps that protect the heart and brain for many years.

Risk factor patterns can look different after 90, so doctors often focus more on comfort, function, and personal goals in that stage.

Future research directions

Larger pooled studies of people in their 90s, and even beyond 100, would help test whether these patterns hold.

Direct measures of early life cognitive ability would also help separate what education does from what people learn in school.

A better understanding of late-life blood pressure, cardiovascular risks, and weight changes could clarify whether they cause decline or reflect illness.

For now, researchers find promise in the nearly 50-year-long study: the long arc of schooling seems to keep paying dividends.

The study is published in the journal PLOS ONE.

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