Investigator:Professor John Gallacher
Title:Traumatic brain injury, emotional adversity and the long-term effects on adult outcomes and dementia
Date of Request:03/28/2019
Status:Pending
ID:DIAN-D1907
Aim 1:Assess the relationship between retrospective self-report ACEs, TBIs and multiple adult biomedical, psychosocial, cognitive, and dementia outcomes in adults age 40-70 years. The consequences of traumatic brain injuries (TBI) on long-term cognitive outcomes is poorly understood however, there is support for evidence which suggests those who have experienced a TBI in younger adulthood experience diminished cognitive reserve which may accelerate cognitive deficits, premature cognitive decline and dementia risk (Wood, 2017). Furthermore, individuals who have experienced traumatic emotional experiences in younger years, also known as adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), a broad construct encompassing overall extreme difficulties and adverse experiences during childhood such as sexual, physical and emotional abuse, deprivation, and family dysfunction (e.g., McLaughlin, 2016) are at risk of adult depression (Liu, 2017), lower adult life satisfaction (Hughes et al., 2016) and dementia (Radford et al., 2017).
Aim 2:Investigate the longitudinal association between ACEs, TBIs and, cognitive decline and dementia outcomes across multiple time points in adults aged 40 to 70 years, testing the hypothesis that there may be an accumulative neurobiological load response associated with ACEs and TBIs. We propose a cross-platform cross-cohort investigation interrogating population cohorts to investigate self-report retrospective TBIs and ACEs as determinants of adult outcomes including cognition and dementia.
