Stressful Life Experiences Among Middle-Aged Women Linked To Greater Cognitive Decline

Stressful life experiences are linked to greater memory decline later in life among middle-aged women, but not men. For women, experiencing more recent stressful life events, but not traumatic events, was associated with decreased cognitive performance on a word recognition task that was completed over a decade later. The same association between stressful life events and cognitive decline did not hold true for men. Traumatic events included accidents, combat, physical attack, natural disasters, rape, receiving threats, theft, and witnessing another person being hurt or killed. Stressful life events included birth of a child, child moving out, death of a . . .