Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

One of the best predictors of life quality, including academic and work success, happiness and even life expectancy is overall cognitive functioning; the better an individual performs on tests of cognition, the better their quality of life. Unsurprisingly then, there is a strong drive to find associations between life-style factors and improvements in cognition, although where associations are suggested, the promise frequently exceeds the scientific evidence. To date, the most encouraging avenues of research have pointed to better sleep and more exercise as predictors, but evidence is mixed about numerous other hypotheses (e.g., diet, meditation, cognitive training). Moreover, most studies in this field have been confined to the laboratory, and have examined only a single life-style factor (e.g., exercise) within a specific population (e.g., the elderly). To really understand the relationship between life-style factors and cognition, large-scale studies are required, which cannot be conducted in a laboratory setting. Through several recently published studies, we have demonstrated that online cognitive testing provides unprecedented opportunities for exploring human cognition on a massive scale among the general population. We have used our online cognitive testing platform, Cambridge Brain Sciences, to assess cognition in more than 1.5 million users who have completed 8 million tests, in addition to providing comprehensive information about their background, demographics, and lifestyle. In this proposal, we outline how we will now leverage this database to test a multitude of mainstream hypotheses about the relationship between specific life-style factors, such as sleep, exercise, and cognitive training, and cognition. We will also mine these data to identify novel relationships, and conduct intervention-based follow-up studies to determine the validity, reliability, and size of these effects. Finally, we will conduct brain imaging studies using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), to examine how the relationship between life-style factors and cognition is underpinned by adaptive changes in brain structure and function. The results of this research program will be of interest to educators, policy makers, human resource professionals, psychologists, cognitive neuroscientists and anyone in the general population with an interest in cognition and the brain. Our findings are likely to pave the way for scientifically validated interventions and programs to help individuals optimize or improve their cognitive functioning. Finally, we outline how the results of this research program will provide an entirely new paradigm for future scientists to explore human cognition.