Associations between memory, depression and wellbeing of an ageing population

Dementia is a major challenge in our aging society. Apart from its health economic impact, cognitive decline may affect the quality of life (QoL) and affective states of individuals. From a measurement perspective, it is of high importance to use quality-assured measurements to derive valid and reliable results. This paper investigates to what extent improved memory metrics can be exploited to investigate the strength of correlation between memory ability, depressive symptoms, and well-being. It also aims to shed light on earlier heterogeneous results through the application of quality-assured measurements. In this paper, we analyzed associations between memory ability, measured by the new and more accurate NeuroMET Memory Metric (NMM), and depressive symptoms and wellbeing of the same individuals measured using the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) and the WHOQoL-BREF of older individuals (n=332, ranging from healthy controls to patients with dementia due to suspected Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), with a mean age of 72 years). While decreased memory ability was moderately associated with more depressive symptoms (Pearson R = -0.36), it was only negligibly associated with worse well-being (associations with WHOQoL-BREF and subdomains ranging between R = 0.08 and 0.12), which is partly in line with previous studies. A group-wise analysis revealed that these effects were stronger for individuals with subjective cognitive decline (SCD). Our study leveraged measurements scales and models with improved accuracy.