Objectives
The objective is to test whether and how early life environmental factors and genetic makeup interact to regulate neurocognitive plasticity through the lifespan.
We will test differences in neurocognitive plasticity by longitudinal training of younger and older adults (18-80 years) of identical and different genetic makeup, namely mono- and dizygotic twins, with varying degrees of prenatal environmental variance, as indexed by their extent of discordance in birth weight. We will employ a novel and ecologically valid memory intervention, utilizing navigation with true locomotion, retrospective and prospective memory, in virtual reality (VR).
Two of the main questions we want to investigate is:
1. Are we neurodevelopmentally set to change through life in certain ways?
2. If so, which early life factors are important to adult and old age brain and cognition, and to what extent are they environmental or genetic in origin?
Preliminary results
Twins have been assessed with brain MRI, cognitive, health and epigenetic measures. So far, a total 242 individuals have participated in assessments at either 1, 2, 3, or 4 time points (total number of assessment time points ~ 550). A total number of 22 groups (of between 2 and 14 participants) have been completed, although some have suffered greatly from the Covid-restrictions at the hospital and the university both in terms of intervals between assessments and possibility of assisting in-person trainings and tests.
We find that among monozygotic twins, brain discordances in terms of structural parameters vary as a function of birth weight discordance, and changes in functional connectivity also do. Moreover, we find that changes in functional connectivity with training, and with a higher training time, the lower birth weight twin becomes in terms of brain structural parameters more similar to the higher birth weight twin with training. These preliminary results have been presented at the AAIC- Alzheimer's Association International Conference and the HBM-Human Brain Mapping conferences summer 2023, and the findings attracted much interest.
The status of the project
This is an ongoing research project, for which we are conducting the last tests and group meetings. We are in the process of recruiting a new group, but the commencement date for the recruitment has not been finalized.
Funding
The project has received funding from the European Research Council under grant agreement nr. 771355 "Set to change: early life factors restricting and promoting neurocognitive plasticity through life — Set-to-change" and from the Norwegian Research Council under grant agreement nr. 301395 "Set to change - Early factors influencing neurocognitive plasticity and aging and the role of beta-amyloid and epigenetics: a twin study".