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Breathe Easy, Speak Easy: Pulmonary Function and Language Performance in Aging.

Dalia Cahana-Amitay^1,2, Lewina O Lee^1,3, Avron Spiro^1,3,4

¹a Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System , Boston , MA , USA.

Experimental Aging Research

|October 26, 2018

Summary

Pulmonary function, specifically forced vital capacity (FVC), is linked to better object naming in older adults. This suggests improved lung health may support cognitive functions like language.

Keywords:

Lexical retrieval brain oxygenation older adults sentence comprehension spirometry

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Area of Science:

Gerontology
Neuroscience
Linguistics

Background:

Aging research identifies pulmonary function (PF) as a significant risk factor for cognitive decline in the elderly.
This study investigates the relationship between respiratory health and language abilities in older adults.

Purpose of the Study:

To explore the association between pulmonary function measures and language performance accuracy in adults aged 55 and older.
To determine if better lung capacity correlates with enhanced cognitive tasks related to language.

Main Methods:

180 native English speakers (55-84 years) were assessed for pulmonary function (FEV1, FVC, FEV1/FVC ratio).
Language performance was evaluated using action/object naming tests and sentence comprehension tasks (syntactic complexity, semantic negation).

Main Results:

Unadjusted analyses showed forced vital capacity (FVC) and forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) associated with language performance.
Higher FVC correlated with better performance on both naming tasks; higher FEV1 correlated with better object naming.
After adjusting for covariates, a significant positive association remained only between FVC and object naming.

Conclusions:

Good pulmonary function, particularly FVC, may support cognitive aspects of language, such as object naming, in older adults.
Potential mechanisms involve enhanced brain oxygenation, supporting neural metabolism and potentially mitigating cerebrovascular risks.
Differential oxygenation demands across language tasks may explain specific associations, like that between FVC and object naming.