# Marriage, Cognitive Trajectories and ADRD Risk in Late Life

> **NIH NIH R01** · MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY · 2022 · $136,587

## Abstract

Project Summary
 In the past decades, extensive research has aimed to identify risk factors, causative
agent, treatments and preventive strategies for Alzheimer's disease (AD), the most common
type of dementia. These efforts have predominantly focused on proximate behavioral and
biological factors, but the upstream social determinants of cognitive decline and AD and related
dementias (ADRD) are not well-understood. The overall objective of this proposed project is to
ascertain how marriage, an important but overlooked social risk/protective factor, is linked to
trajectories of cognitive decline and risk of developing dementia in late life.
 Marriage has long been identified as the most important type of social relationships that
holds the greatest significance for health during adulthood. However, surprisingly, scientists
know little about whether and how marriage influences cognitive decline and progression to
ADRD. Rapid social changes in marriage, family formation, and family dissolution mean that an
increasing number of older Americans are entering late life with complex marital histories, which
reshapes key aspects of their lives, and may in turn affect cognitive function over the life course.
We hypothesize that the complex life-course traits of marital relationships such as current
marital status, histories of marital dissolutions, and marital strain, will influence trajectories of
cognitive decline and dementia risk over one’s life course via multifaceted economic,
psychosocial, behavioral, and biomedical pathways.
 This project breaks new ground with an innovative interdisciplinary life-course research
design that conjoins data from three NIH-sponsored, national, longitudinal datasets: (1) Health
and Retirement Study (HRS), (2) National Health and Aging Trends Study (NHATS), and (3)
National Social Life, Health and Aging Project (NSHAP) to examine a full life course picture of
marital relationships including marital status, marital biography and marital quality linked to
cognitive trajectories and dementia. We will apply advanced statistical methods to
systematically examine economic, psychosocial, behavioral and biomedical mechanisms
through which marriage influences cognitive trajectories and dementia risk over the life course,
and further assess potential gender differences in the processes.
 The interdisciplinary research team is characterized by a complementary set of talents
and experience in population health, cognitive aging, marriage and social relationships,
neurology, neuropsychology, bio-demography, epidemiology and quantitative methodologies
that uniquely position them to carry out this innovative project.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10400187
- **Project number:** 5R01AG061118-04
- **Recipient organization:** MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Hui Liu
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $136,587
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-08-01 → 2023-08-01

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10400187

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10400187, Marriage, Cognitive Trajectories and ADRD Risk in Late Life (5R01AG061118-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10400187. Licensed CC0.

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