Teen-led talent test in 1960 now predicts risk of Alzheimer's disease

High school students who had low scores on the Project Talent test were more likely to later develop Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia.

Nearly six decades ago, about 440,000 students in the United States took a test that would become the largest survey ever conducted with American teenagers.

Now, a new study found that those who did well in testing when they were teenagers tend to have a lower incidence of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias by the time they reach their 60s and 70s.

The Project Talent test was conducted in 1960 on the US government's concerns that Americans were behind in the space race. Three years before the test, the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik 1 into low Earth orbit.

The purpose of the test is to identify students with skills for science and engineering. In addition to answering questions about education and general knowledge, students also provided information about their health, family life, personality traits and aspirations.

In recent years, researchers have used test data for follow-up studies, including one conducted by Susan Lapham and colleagues at the American Institutes for Research, the organization that initially administered the two-and-a-half day test.

The researchers examined the results of more than 85,000 applicants and then compared them to their claims and expenses. The analysis revealed that the warning signs of dementia are already noticeable in adolescence.

Lapham and his colleagues found that those who had less memory for words and lower mechanical reasoning when they were teenagers were at a higher risk of developing dementia later in life.

They found that men whose scores were in the bottom half were 17% more likely to develop dementia. Similarly, women in half of the lowest rated women had 16% higher risk of dementia.

The researchers also found an association between lower performance on other test components and an increased risk of later dementia.

Lapham told the Washington Post that the results corroborate the idea that there should be an intervention for high school students and even the youngest to keep their brain active from an early age.

"In summary, lower performance on some specific measures of cognitive ability in adolescence is associated with an increased likelihood of DRAM 53 years later," wrote Lapham and colleagues in their study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association September 7th.

"Our findings support the origins of risk of early-life MAJ and offer the potential for specific measures of cognitive ability to assist in the early identification of subgroups at risk for the disease."