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Updated: Jun 26, 2025
Methodology for Establishing a Community-Wide Life Laboratory for Capturing Unobtrusive and Continuous Remote Activity and Health Data
Published on: July 27, 2018
Historic Cognitive Function Trajectories as Predictors of Sedentary Behavior and Physical Activity in Older Adults
Dori E Rosenberg1, Yinxiang Wu2, Abisola Idu3
1Investigative Sciences Division, Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute, Seattle, Washington, USA.
Background:
We examined whether trajectories of cognitive function over 10 years predict later-life physical activity (PA), sedentary time (ST), and sleep.
Methods:
Participants were from the Adult Changes in Thought (ACT) cohort study. We included 611 ACT participants who wore accelerometers and had 3+ measures of cognition in the 10 years prior to accelerometer wear. The Cognitive Assessment Screening Instrument (CASI) measured cognition and was scored using item-response theory (IRT). activPAL and ActiGraph accelerometers worn over 7 days measured ST and PA outcomes. Self-reported time in bed and sleep quality measured sleep outcomes. Analyses used growth mixture modeling to classify CASI-IRT scores into latent groups and examine associations with PA, ST, and sleep including demographic and health covariates.
Results:
Participants (Mean age = 80.3 (6.5) years, 90.3% White, 57.1% female, 29.3% had less than 16 years of education) fell into 3 latent trajectory groups: average stable CASI (56.1%), high stable CASI (34.0%), and declining CASI (9.8%). The declining group had 16 minutes less stepping time (95% confidence interval [95% CI]: 0.6, 31.4), 1 517 fewer steps per day (95% CI: 138, 2 896), and 16.3 minutes per day less moderate-to-vigorous PA (95% CI: 1.3, 31.3) compared to the average stable group. There were no associations between CASI trajectory and sedentary or sleep outcomes.
Conclusions:
Declining cognition predicted lower PA providing some evidence of a reverse relationship between PA and cognition in older adults. However, this conclusion is limited by having outcomes at only one time point, a nonrepresentative sample, self-reported sleep outcomes, and using a global cognition measure.
