Late-life Social Integration
: Do social networks protect cognitive / brain health?
Various studies suggest that elderly people who are actively engaged in social interaction tend to show a lower prevalence of dementia and less cognitive decline. While existing studies have measured the characteristics of social relationships in late life through subjective self-reports, understanding one’s social life in whole group level has become an important issue. Therefore, we have utilized the KSHSAP complete social network data, which allows for the indexing of an individual’s network-based characteristics in their village.
Recently completed projects investigated the social network position that is associated with relatively maintained brain health in late-life. In the meantime, we are investigating the social network characteristics of people with better cognitive function even under geriatric depressive symptoms.
Figure: Complete social network that visualizes older adults in township K. The size of the vertex (shown in dots) indicates brokerage, the amount of individuals’ opportunity to connect otherwise unconnected others. The different colors represent different Ri (smallest unit of an administrative district in South Korea).
Relevant publications
Joo, W. T., Kwak, S., Youm, Y., & Chey, J. (2017). Brain functional connectivity difference in the complete network of an entire village: the role of social network size and embeddedness. Scientific reports, 7(1), 1-12.
Kwak, S., Joo, W. T., Youm, Y., & Chey, J. (2018). Social brain volume is associated with in-degree social network size among older adults. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 285(1871), 20172708.
Kim, H., Kwak, S., Kim, J., Youm, Y., & Chey, J. (2019). social Network position Moderates the Relationship between Late-life Depressive symptoms and Memory Differently in Men and Women. Scientific reports, 9(1), 1-10.
Bang, M., Kim, J., An, S. K., Youm, Y., Chey, J., Kim, H. C., ... & Lee, E. (2019). Associations of systemic inflammation with frontotemporal functional network connectivity and out-degree social-network size in community-dwelling older adults. Brain, behavior, and immunity, 79, 309-313.