More school doesn’t always mean better brain health — Study

Experts in a new study, say that education quality (EQ) has a more significant impact on brain health than years of education (YoE) across various groups, particularly in relation to ageing and dementia.

They said that fewer years of schooling in a country with a high-quality education could be more beneficial than completing more years in a low-quality education, highlighting the benefits of enhancing education quality for future generations.

In the study, the researchers look at the effects of educational disparities on ageing, as well as the most common causes of late-onset and early-onset dementia in 7533 subjects from 20 countries, while taking into consideration variables like age, sex, and cognition.

The 20 countries included Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Peru, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.

The study, titled “Qualitative and quantitative educational disparities and brain signatures in healthy ageing and dementia across global settings”, was published in the April edition of eClinicalMedicine.

They reported results that indicated that lower EQ and YoE correlate with brain alterations, but EQ has a more significant impact, affecting brain volume and functional networks more than YoE does.

Also, EQ’s influence was up to seven times greater than YoE at the whole-brain level. YoE reflects the duration of formal education but does not capture the cognitive skills embedded within an educational system.

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These results underline the more substantial role of education and reinforce the idea that EQ is a better predictor of brain health than YoE.

According to them, the findings call attention to the necessity of incorporating education quality into research and public health strategies aimed at improving brain health, highlighting the role of country-level educational measures in understanding cognitive health outcomes.