Education and neurocognitive aging - is there a relation?

Aging is associated with declining brain integrity and cognitive functioning, but with marked individual differences regarding onset and rate of decline. Several factors have been suggested to account for this heterogeneity. Here we review evidence for the hypothesis that higher educational attainment relates to better preserved neurocognitive functioning in aging. Collectively, education is shown to be related to an advantage in level but not rate of change. Thus, educational attainment is primarily related to late-life cognitive functioning by playing a role in developmental processes that lead to differences in brain and cognition during early adulthood that persist into older age.