Abstract
Several epidemiological studies have found a lower incidence of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in highly educated populations, but the protective mechanism of education against the disease is still unclear. Our objective was to investigate the association between education and the pathology of Alzheimer’s disease with positron emission tomography (PET) . In the investigation of the association between the education and Aβ, our findings indicated a reduced amyloid pathology in highly educated participants, which leads to the proposal that education may have an inhibitory effect on Aβ pathology. The education may increase the brain resistance against the Aβ pathology. On the contrary, in the investigation of the association between the tau pathology and the education, our findings indicate that education exert its beneficial effect by reducing the adverse cognitive consequences of tau aggregation. We found no significant relationship between the tau pathology and the occupation and SES. The education may increase the cognitive reserve which compensate the damage due to tau pathology. The results of these studies extends previous findings of a lower incidence of AD in highly educated populations, suggesting that education provides protection against the disease. People with more education might be prone to have a greater inhibitory effect against Aβ deposition due to the increase of the brain resistance, and, at the same time, they have greater reserve capacity : requiring greater tau pathological changes for dementia to manifest.
