On Wednesday, June 13th, we visited the Musée de L’homme Exposition Néandertal. At the museum, I stumbled upon an art display of people that varied greatly by height and took a photo with them. Additionally, my roommates and I took a photo right outside the museum which had a wonderful view of the Eiffel Tower. From this photo, you can see that we are all different heights.
As I’ve been a petite person my entire life, this made me wonder if height had anything to do with cognitive performance, as previous studies have suggested that adult height may be a predictor of depression and dementia (Magnusson et al., 2006; Zhang et al., 2009; Guven and Lee, 2014; Russ et al., 2014). These studies were conducted all across the globe, suggesting that the correlations are valid across a broad population.
Surprisingly, there was one cross-sectional study (Pereira et al., 2016) that found that adult height was, in fact, an independent predictor of cognitive function in late-life. It appeared to have a correlation on general and executive function and memory that was independent of age, weight, education level, gender and lifestyle factors. The researchers suggested that adult height may irreversibly contribute to cognitive function in adult life and may be used in models to predict cognitive performance. The study was composed by 1051 participants randomly selected from two cities in the north of Portugal (Guimarγes and Vizela) using the local area health authority registries and was considered representative of the Portuguese population. I am interested in learning if a repetition of this study in a different population group would produce the same results.
While this study was an extremely interesting read, I remain extremely skeptical of how generalizable the results of the study are. There are so many different factors that can contribute to height: gender, ethnicity, nutrition, genetics, etc. It seems unfair to predict one’s cognitive performance based solely on a physical factor that can be determined by many different factors.
Neuroscience is fascinating and can be extremely interdisciplinary. I never would have expected studies to connect cognitive performance and height, but I was surprised by Pubmed. I am excited to read about other studies and evaluate their science in the future using the same mindset as professional research scientists when they are critically reviewing other studies. From NBB402, I have learned so much about what constitutes a strong or weak study based on novelty, importance, assessment of methodology and interpretation of results.
References:
Guven, C., & Lee, W. S. (2012). Height And Cognitive Function At Older Ages: Is Height A Useful Summary Measure Of Early Childhood Experiences? Health Economics,22(2), 224-233. doi:10.1002/hec.1827
Pereira, V. H., Costa, P. S., Santos, N. C., Cunha, P. G., Correia-Neves, M., Palha, J. A., & Sousa, N. (2016). Adult Body Height Is a Good Predictor of Different Dimensions of Cognitive Function in Aged Individuals: A Cross-Sectional Study. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience,8. doi:10.3389/fnagi.2016.00217
Richiardi, L. (2006). Faculty of 1000 evaluation for Height at age 18 years is a strong predictor of attained education later in life: Cohort study of over 950,000 Swedish men. Int. J. Epidemiol.doi:10.3410/f.30499.487001
Russ, T. C., Kivimäki, M., Starr, J. M., Stamatakis, E., & Batty, G. D. (2014). Height in relation to dementia death: Individual participant meta-analysis of 18 UK prospective cohort studies. British Journal of Psychiatry,205(05), 348-354. doi:10.1192/bjp.bp.113.142984
Zhang, Z. X., Plassman, B. L., Xu, Q., Zahner, G., Wu, B., Gai, M. Y., . . . Xu, T. (2009). Lifespan influences on mid- to late-life cognitive function in a Chinese birth cohort. Neurology,73(3), 186-194. doi:10.1212/wnl.0b013e3181ae7c90